Photojournalist slammed against wall, arrested amid NYC protest

Independent photojournalist and documentarian Avery Craig was assaulted and arrested by police while documenting immigration protests in New York, New York, on Nov. 29, 2025.

Demonstrators had gathered near a General Services Administration parking lot in lower Manhattan in an attempt to physically block federal authorities who began staging there at around 11 a.m., The City reported.

New York City Police Department officers were called in to support the agents, helping to push protesters back and erect metal barricades around the parking garage. Shortly after 1 p.m., agents abruptly exited in their vehicles, and protesters chased them down the street.

Amid this chaotic scene, NYPD officers continued to clash with demonstrators. Craig told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he somehow became caught up in it.

“As I was getting to the sidewalk, a cop was running up the block to arrest a protester. At the same moment, I was running up the block to document what was happening,” he said. “As I’m running up, a cop slams me to the wall and then yells, ‘You’re next! You’re next!’”

Craig said he asked why he was being detained and identified himself as press multiple times.

“He says, ‘We don’t give a shit.’ And then I’m pointing to the journal and the book that I had in my hand, and he slams them on the concrete, and the journal actually broke from the spine,” he recounted.

In footage of the incident captured by independent journalist Wali Khan for Status Coup, a baffled Craig is seen wearing city-issued press credentials around his neck as two officers turn and push him face-first into a wall. Multiple voices can be heard shouting out, “He’s press!”

Craig told the Tracker that, luckily, a protester retrieved his book and journal, the latter of which contains notes and reporting materials for a documentary project he’s working on in the Bronx.

He was then loaded into a police van and transported to a precinct, where he waited for approximately three hours before officers notified him that they had voided the charge against him.

“The charge that they were going to place upon me was obstruction, and which the supervisor to the arresting officer clearly stated, as I was in the van, that they had it all on body camera,” Craig said. “While I was in the cell, and they were telling me that I was good to go, I asked them if they checked the body camera, and they obviously said that nothing happened. And that was how it was settled.”

In a statement to The City, an NYPD spokesperson said the officers were responding to a call for a “disorderly group.”

“Upon arrival, officers observed multiple individuals who were blocking the street and exits at different locations. The individuals were also observed throwing debris,” the statement said. “They were instructed multiple times to disperse, and they did not comply. As a result, multiple individuals were taken into custody.”

The department did not respond to an additional request for comment on Craig’s arrest.