Inside NYC’s upwardly mobile Gen Z agitator groups and how they target ICE enforcement
"It’s all part of a larger effort to sow discord."
The anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protests in Bushwick, Brooklyn on Saturday night included a tight-knit group of young semi-pro protesters, familiar from previous clashes with cops.
This network of Gen Z agitators — largely young, upwardly mobile transplants to New York City — seem intent on picking a fight with authority first and cause second, moving seamlessly from climate activism to anti-Israel protest and now anti-ICE and immigration enforcement.
They organize through decentralized non-public networks, such as Discord and encrypted messaging apps, which you have to be a vetted member to join, according to sources, which is how they got word out that ICE was at the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center on Saturday night.
“You’re either on a text list or an e-mail list. You get notifications. We saw this in Minnesota [in January]. There were events that precipitated the two tragic deaths there where [protesters] were all alerted by these tip lines, ‘ICE is out, go to this address and disrupt,’” Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), told me.
“In New York City, you have a political structure that supports this sort of agitation against ICE,” he added.
The encrypted messaging app networks, some of which appear to have ties with public social media accounts, also seem to include local City Council Member Sandy Nurse — a self-described “anti-capitalist” co-chair of the NYC Council Progressive Caucus who ran on divesting funding from the NYPD.
Nurse, who did not respond to requests for comment, was at Saturday’s demonstration and shared details of the ICE vehicle being tracked with a New York Times reporter, suggesting knowledge on how the pop-up mob came to be.
The protest started after ICE took an illegal migrant who had resisted arrest to the Medical Center when he complained he needed medical attention.
A scrum of about 200 activists assembled, and NYPD responded to the mob around 10:25 p.m. following complaints from neighbors.
The scene quickly descended into chaos, with violent agitators blocking the hospital’s emergency entrances and exits, throwing garbage and hurling trashcans at vehicles in a melee which lasted until approximately 3:00 a.m.Nine were arrested, among them 34-year-old Jennifer Hansen, who allegedly smashed the rear window of an ICE vehicle with her fist, then attempted to flee, before being arrested.
Hansen, a California native, has been arrested twice previously in recent years at other radical protest actions in the city.
On Oct. 13, 2023, Hansen was one of sixty protesters taken into custody during a anti-Israel demonstration that marched from Baruch College to the United Nations.
Hansen was arrested after she appeared to assault a lieutenant when she “refused to lift her legs to step into the vehicle and repeatedly kicked an officer in the legs and wrapped her legs around the officer’s legs,” cops said at the time.
Hansen was charged with resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration, assault and disorderly conduct.
Hansen was arrested again last spring after clashing with police officers outside a Brooklyn synagogue. An irate mob gathered outside Congregation Shaare Zion on Ocean Parkway on April 25, 2025, to demonstrate against a scheduled speech by Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — which got canceled due to the unrest.
During a scuffle between cops and protesters, Hansen was taken into custody and charged with resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration, and three counts of disorderly conduct, police said. Neither of those prior charges ever made it to court, appearing not to have been pursued by prosecutors.
Meanwhile, Wyoming native Presleigh Hayashida, 30, is charged with resisting arrest Saturday at the Brooklyn hospital action. She has been aggressively protesting in New York since she blew into town after college seven years ago.
She currently works as an “associate project manager” at Minnesota-based civil engineering firm EVS, Inc, where she is “working on solar projects.”
University of Wyoming photos of Hayashida taken in 2018 show her as shy, grinning student holding up a cartoon garbage monster made from cardboard and cat food tins after she won a science fair contest about composting.
But in New York, she locked arm-in-arm with Brooklyn activists as a high-ranking civil disobedience instructor with the climate protestor group Extinction Rebellion.
In October 2021, Hayashida was arrested for forming a blockade in the middle of FDR Drive by sitting on the pavement and locking arms with other climate protestors through giant plastic tubes.
She was charged with a misdemeanor, which was later downgraded to a warning.
“We’re here to tell those in power that we refuse to stand idly by as they fail to act on the greatest threat our species has ever faced. We refuse to be a bystander as floods, droughts, storms and fires all bring our society closer to the brink of collapse,” she said in 2022 after 13 climate comrades were arrested at a demonstration in Madison Square Park.
However, that “greatest threat” moved to second place once Hayashida switched to Palestine activism the following year, when she was part of a yearlong harassment campaign against a drone manufacturer with offices in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Hayashida and her group occupied the building lobby, held weekly protests and organized an email campaign targeting Easy Aerial, which makes military drones for Israel and US Border Patrol, she described on a podcast.
The company ended up leaving, citing “pro-Palestine” pressure.
“These are well-organized and well-funded. They’re clearly not grassroots, spontaneous disruptions. They fit into a pattern,” said Mehlman.
“We’ve seen this play out over the past several years whether anti-ICE, free Palestine or climate change. People are signed up for notifications, they can turn out at a moment’s notice, because seemingly none of them have jobs. It’s all part of a larger effort to sow discord,” he said.
Not all activists were impressed with Saturday’s Wyckoff Hospital clash. On local Bushwick message boards catering to far-left residents some called the mob irresponsible and lamented such commotion outside a hospital may contribute to a culture of fear around illegals seeking healthcare.
Contrary to what many protestors at the time appeared to believe, ICE was not at the hospital to detain a patient.
The man ICE had arrested was Nigerian citizen Chidozie Wilson Okeke, who entered the US on a tourist visa in Aug. 2023 and overstayed it, meaning he had been in the country illegally for two years when ICE arrested him, a rep for the US Department of Homeland Security previously told The New York Post.
At some point during his time in the US Okeke was arrested for assault and criminal drug possession, which put him on ICE’s radar. During his encounter with ICE over the weekend he threw a violent fit and attempted to run officers over with his car, according to DHS.
He then claimed he needed medical attention, but once at the hospital, Okeke refused to comply with staff, “throwing himself to the floor and screaming,” DHS said, before he was medically cleared to leave.
“Last night, 5/2, a neighbor who was already in ICE detention was brought in to Wyckoff hospital for treatment,” a post on one local message board read. The term “neighbor” is widely used by such groups to refer to criminal non-citizens in custody.
“The community responded to ICE’s presence at the hospital accordingly. ICE DID NOT RAID THE HOSPITAL. ICE did not attempt to abduct any additional patients in the hospital. Neighbors should not avoid getting treatment at hospitals or medical centers,” the user chided.
“This fear mongering will deter them and others from seeking medical attention. What transpired last night w/ ICE and NYPD is absolutely horrific but lets not shift the blame onto the nursing staff by spreading rumors that a worker called ICE,” the user continued.
A local clandestine group of activists who share intel with popular anti-ICE social media pages and hotlines were following an unmarked vehicle they had previously identified as being ICE agents.
Those social media accounts include Instagram’s “NYC ICE Watch” which sends out live alerts to ICE actions. The account says it aims to “force the system into a state of crisis, that’s when real change can happen,” and strongly encourages property destruction and vandalism, instructing “a month of rioting has gotten more results than a decade of voting.”
A version of this article originally appeared in the New York Post on May 6, 2026.
If these protestors were to be asked to explain, in their OWN words and not from a script, what they're protesting and why, they wouldn't know how to answer. All they know is they're getting paid. They're selling their souls and don't even realize it.