An asylum-seeker who fled anti-LGBTQ+ persecution in Ecuador is now in ICE custody after being arrested as part of a controversial undercover operation targeting men who were allegedly cruising at New York City’s Penn Station.

The man, identified only as Isrrael, told Gothamist this week that he believes federal Amtrak police targeted him because of his appearance and mannerisms.

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According to the outlet, which, along with nonprofit news website The City, first reported on the Amtrak Police Department’s sting operation last month, Isrrael was on his way to meet a real estate broker in July when he entered a Penn Station men’s room. In a criminal complaint, police allege that Isrrael exposed himself in “plain view.” But Isrreal told Gothamist that he was merely using a urinal when an undercover cop pinned him against the wall, handcuffed, and arrested him.

Isrrael said he was wearing a t-shirt and shorts at the time, had bleach-blonde hair, and described himself as “very feminine in the way that I walk, that I talk, that I sit.”

“I thought that the U.S. would give me a different opportunity,” he said. “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.”

According to Gothamist, records show that Isrrael entered the U.S. at a border checkpoint in Hidalgo, Texas, where he applied for asylum. His application reportedly states that in Ecuador, he was harassed and assaulted for being gay and fears getting killed in his home country. He had been in New York City less than a month before he was arrested. Despite being allowed to remain in the U.S. until November 2026 as his asylum claim is processed, Isrrael now faces deportation.

As Gothamist reported last month, among the 200 people arrested in the Amtrak Police Department (APD) cruising crackdown, 20 have been turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That’s because while state and city laws ban New York police from handing detainees over to ICE, as a federal police department, the APD is obligated to check whether detainees have been flagged for deportation proceedings and, if so, alert ICE.

Isrrael’s attorney told Gothamist that charges against him were dropped on October 1, but he remains in custody at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania.

“We’re seeing the intersection of both ICE raids and anti-LGBTQ policing in which they can do both at the same time,” Kevin Nadal, a professor at John Jay College who studies the intersection of LGBTQ+ issues and the criminal justice system, told the outlet.

Nadal also noted that he hasn’t seen this type of enforcement of anti-cruising laws in recent years. As Gothamist reported last month, NYPD data indicates only 12 people were arrested for public lewdness in and around Penn Station during the first five months of 2025. Since June, those arrests have skyrocketed thanks to the APD operation.  

Amtrak Deputy Police Chief Martin Conway insisted that ADP officers are “not targeting anybody on the way they look.”

“We’re taking action on behaviors, committing criminal acts,” he told Gothamist. “What they look like has no bearing on that.”

New York Democrats, including Rep. Jerry Nadler, state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Segal, and New York City Council member Erik Bottcher, have reacted to reporting on the ADP arrests with outrage, demanding explanations from Amtrak President Roger Harris and an end to its alleged targeting of gay men.

Gothamist reports that others who were arrested during ADP’s Penn Station bathroom sting, including one NYPD sergeant, have also had their charges dropped in recent weeks. As Jennvine Wong, a supervising attorney at the Cop Accountability Project for the Legal Aid Society One, told the outlet, the sudden rise in arrests and lack of prosecutions suggest that “the enforcement and cause for arrests may be flawed.”

As for Isrrael, he said that “being detained because of my sexuality” has revived past trauma. “I just feel like a crushed insect that cannot defend itself,” he told Gothamist.