Man who fled homophobia in Ecuador says he was profiled in Penn Station bathroom arrest

An Ecuadorian asylum-seeker thought he’d found a safe haven from homophobia in New York City. But within a month of arriving, he was detained during an undercover sting operation at a Penn Station bathroom in July and remains in ICE custody, despite his charges being dropped.

Isrrael, who is now facing deportation, spoke to Gothamist from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania, and asked that only his middle name be used due to fear of retaliation by immigration officials. He was one of nearly 200 people arrested as part of a cruising crackdown by federal Amtrak police, who say officers were responding to complaints about men exposing their penises in the transit hub’s bathroom. But Isrrael says he was simply using the urinal and was unfairly targeted by officers who profiled him as a queer person because of his appearance.

“I thought that the U.S. would give me a different opportunity,” he said in Spanish through a translator. “And so I felt very free when I got here. I felt like I could wear my hair the way I wanted to and that no one was judging me and that people were kind to me, and that they treated me well without knowing me.”

Police said Isrrael exposed himself in “plain view” in the bathroom in July, according to a criminal complaint. Amtrak officials denied their police targeted him for his perceived sexuality.

The charges against him were dropped by a state judge on Oct. 1, his attorneys said. But instead of being freed, he was among at least 20 immigrants caught in the crackdown who were transferred into ICE custody for deportation proceedings. People seeking asylum in the United States are permitted to reside in the country while their claim is pending.

Isrrael’s asylum records show he’s permitted to remain in the country until November 2026.

U.S. citizens arrested for public lewdness in the same bathroom this summer, including an NYPD sergeant, have either had their charges dropped and sealed from their record, or issued a small fine.

Kevin Nadal, a John Jay College professor who researches LGBTQ issues in the criminal justice system, said gay people have long been targeted by police in public places.

”We're seeing the intersection of both ICE raids and anti-LGBTQ policing in which they can do both at the same time,” Nadal said. “They can try to enforce these cruising laws, which haven't been in effect, at least nothing that I've heard of in more recent years.”

Following reporting from Gothamist and the nonprofit news website The City about the crackdown at the bathroom, a coalition of New York lawmakers sent a letter to Amtrak President Roger Harris accusing the police department of “anti-LGBTQ policing from the Stonewall era.”

A similar enforcement spree at the bathrooms inside the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown sparked a class-action lawsuit in 2017 after the Port Authority police were also accused of targeting gay and queer people. The Port Authority settled the lawsuit in 2022, and committed to providing more sensitivity training for its cops.

By his telling, Isrrael got off the subway at Penn Station en route to meet a real estate broker as he searched for an apartment after moving to the city. He said he made a stop in the station’s men’s bathroom when a man who turned out to be a plainclothes police officer stood behind him while he used a urinal. Isrrael said he did nothing wrong and was simply urinating, but the officer pinned him against the wall, handcuffed him and took him into custody.

Isrrael alleged that Amtrak police targeted him for his appearance. He said he was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, had bleach-blonde hair and is “very feminine in the way that I walk, that I talk, that I sit.”

Records shared by Isrrael’s attorneys show he’s an asylum-seeker, and according to his application, he fears being killed for being an openly gay man back home. In Ecuador, he said, he was assaulted for being gay and harassed for how he dressed and talked.

He crossed the border at a checkpoint in Hidalgo, Texas, where he first applied for asylum, his lawyers said. He worked jobs at a hotel and later a food market in Florida, then to New York in June, seeking to be closer to his friends.

New York City’s sanctuary laws prohibit the NYPD from turning immigrants over to ICE in most cases. But because the summer-long sweeps at the Penn Station bathroom were conducted by the federally run Amtrak Police Department, the officers were required to run a federal check of any person arrested to see if they are wanted by law enforcement, or if there’s a detainer for their arrest by immigration authorities, according to Amtrak Deputy Police Chief Martin Conway.

Conway declined to comment on Isrrael’s case, but denied his officers profiled men based on their perceived sexuality.

“Certainly we’re not targeting anybody on the way they look,” Conway said. “We’re taking action on behaviors, committing criminal acts. What they look like has no bearing on that. And as far as they feel they’re legally here and not legally here, that’s probably a better question for ICE.”

During a tour of the bathroom, Conway showed a group of urinals he said used to be a haven for hookups. He said the section of toilets has since been blocked off from public use.

The bathroom targeted by Amtrak police is a hot spot for “cruising” — or casual public hookups — on websites such as Sniffies, which is used to arrange anonymous sexual encounters.

Amtrak police reports obtained by Gothamist through a Freedom of Information request show officers stated many of the people arrested for public lewdness in the Penn Station bathroom over the summer were seen by police masturbating near urinals between 20 seconds and 1 minute before they were apprehended.

In each case, the reports show Amtrak police ran background checks on the men they arrested. In a handful of cases, officers found a “warrant for arrest of alien” from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Officers then transferred those men to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for detention at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan.

“ This has been a very ugly experience. And now being detained because of my sexuality, I have lived through horrible situations and it's revived some more trauma that I had,” Isrrael said before tearing up. “I just feel like a crushed insect that cannot defend itself.”