Ramsey Khalifeh
By Ramsey Khalifeh
Published Sep 24, 2025
At least 20 immigrants have been taken into ICE custody at Penn Station since June, law enforcement officials said, as part of an aggressive crackdown by the federally run Amtrak Police Department on anonymous sex at the transit hub's notorious bathrooms.
Nearly 200 people were arrested or detained since the start of June for alleged public lewdness or indecent exposure in the station’s men’s bathroom near its entrance at Eighth Avenue and 31st Street, Amtrak Deputy Police Chief Martin Conway confirmed to Gothamist. NYPD data shows only 12 people were arrested for public lewdness in and around Penn Station during the first five months of the year. But the data from Amtrak shows arrests for the violation skyrocketed since then.
The bathroom is a hot spot on “cruising” apps like Sniffies, which men use to arrange public sexual encounters.
The Amtrak Police Department has deployed undercover cops into the bathroom to catch people seeking illicit meetups, according to a police officer who took part in the crackdown and asked not to be named because he was not authorized to talk about the operation. But he said the enforcement caught nearly two dozen men with ICE “detainers,” which flag people to be taken into custody for deportation proceedings.
Conway confirmed that some of the men arrested in the Penn Station bathroom were turned over to ICE. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on the transfers of men to their facilities.
State and city laws ban New York police departments from turning over people in custody to ICE. But because Amtrak is a federal agency, its police department is required to alert ICE if someone has been flagged in its system.
The enforcement blitz was first reported by the news website The City.
Conway said the bathroom crackdown was sparked by complaints Amtrak received from customers.
Penn Station is one of the few areas in the city policed by Amtrak officers.
Ramsey Khalifeh
“Naturally, we are going to address the conditions,” he said. “ We continue to patrol the restrooms and if and when we find any criminal activity, we do make arrests.”
The Amtrak officer who asked not to be named said part of the enforcement strategy included plainclothes officers hiding in bathroom stalls or pretending to use the urinals. If police suspected any sexual activity, he said they would make an arrest. The officer showed a Gothamist reporter a screenshot from body-worn camera footage showing two men groping each other while standing at the urinals before they were arrested.
Amtrak representatives declined to provide police reports related to the crackdown.
The City reported on a man who said he was arrested in the bathroom after standing at a urinal for a prolonged period, causing an officer to get suspicious. The man reported he was detained in a back room at Penn Station, where officers called him a homophobic slur. His charge of public lewdness was dropped after he completed a diversion program, The City reported.
An off-duty NYPD sergeant was also taken into custody at the Penn Station bathroom and issued a summons for public exposure earlier this month, the New York Post reported. Court records show his case was dropped on Tuesday.
Penn Station's bathroom has long been a symbol for the transit hub's dilapidated state.
Ramsey Khalifeh
The crackdown comes as the Trump administration has pushed to arrest and deport more immigrants in New York, even those who have not been charged with any crimes. After the U.S. Department of Justice moved to drop federal corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams earlier this year, the mayor’s office tried to give ICE access to Rikers Island — which was blocked by a state judge after a lawsuit filed by the City Council.
Trump earlier this year stripped the MTA of oversight of a long-sought redevelopment of Penn Station, which is owned by Amtrak but primarily used by the locally run Long Island Rail Road and NJ Transit. His administration appointed former NYC Transit President Andy Byford to lead the rebuilding effort for Amtrak, and aims to begin work in 2027.
The bathroom has long symbolized the dilapidation at Penn Station, which has received national media attention as a hub for drug use and homelessness. Amtrak renovated and cleaned up the bathroom in 2017.
“It was always filthy,” said commuter Phil Brown, 65, who was standing at the concourse. “Before it was, use it when you can and sort of be careful because it was filled with urine and things were always overflowing in there.”
The “Sniffies” app features an open chat room for New York Penn Station. Anonymous users in the app’s group chat have been logging when police officers were spotted monitoring the bathroom in recent weeks. One user warned others to stop going to the bathroom, saying police officers were waiting in stalls and watching through the cracks.
But still, users continued posting call-outs to meet up for sex. Users have suggested using other bathrooms in the station, including at the LIRR concourse or in the Moynihan Train Hall, the latter of which is not owned by Amtrak.
A similar crackdown was subject to a major settlement against the Port Authority in 2022.
According to the settlement in the Southern District of New York, the interstate agency used discriminatory practices with plainclothes officers, falsely arresting and accusing gay, bisexual and gender nonconforming people of public lewdness and exposure in the terminal’s men’s restrooms because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation. The settlement suspended the practice, required LGBTQ+ sensitivity training and found multiple officers and the Port Authority liable for violating the Fourth and 14th Amendments.
Supervising attorney Jennvine Wong at the Cop Accountability Project for the Legal Aid Society— which focuses on problematic policing and officer misconduct — said her team has received several cases representing men who were accused of public lewdness at the station.
“It’s definitely a cause for concern. One, because it was such a sudden and precipitous rise … and then of course, the fact that many of them were actually getting declined to prosecute and are being referred to diversion programs,” Wong said. She added that those two paths could indicate that the enforcement and cause for arrests may be flawed.
Wong’s concern with the latest enforcement at Penn Station is that Amtrak Police could be following similar practices.
A sign posted outside the Amtrak concourse men’s bathroom says, “This facility is monitored 24/7 by uniformed and undercover Amtrak Police Department officers. Any law violators will be prosecuted.”
Liam Quigley contributed reporting to this story.
Source (Archive)
Amtrak Police Arrests Surge at Penn Bathroom Cruising Spot
Federal law enforcement turned a person they arrested in the transit hub directly over to ICE.
by Gwynne Hogan | Sept. 24, 2025, 10:57 a.m.Amtrak Police enter the Men's Bathroom at 34th Street Penn Station. Tuesday, September, 24, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
A surge of public lewdness arrests inside a Penn Station bathroom by Amtrak Police has rattled the LGBTQ community and landed at least one person in ICE custody, THE CITY has learned.
The surge in arrests by the Amtrak Police, a national police force who are not bound by city sanctuary protections, kicked off in June, targeting a Penn Station bathroom listed on Sniffies, a popular cruising website and app used for gay hookups.
Among those arrested was David, a 31-year-old health care worker, who says he was just trying to use the bathroom on his way back from visiting a friend in New Jersey when he felt he was being watched by a man nearby. David, who is gay, was wearing a rainbow Pride wristband as he says he was simply trying to pee when he was arrested.
“It does take me a while, especially when there are so many people,” he said. But moments later the man approached him at the urinal, telling him he was under arrest for public lewdness.
Two other men who had been looking at each other over the bathroom partitions were also led out under arrest, David recalled. THE CITY is withholding his full name because the charge against him has since been dropped.
David said he was then handcuffed to a wall in a cell inside Penn Station, where he heard one officers say to others, “Yeah, we got three more fag pervs.” He later asked them for a cup of water and was told, “Sure, you want a steak too?”
Nearly three hours later, David was released with a desk appearance ticket ordering him to show up Manhattan Criminal Court at 100 Centre St., where the charge was eventually dropped after he participated in a diversion program.
“I was never arrested in my life,” David said. “It was traumatizing.”
NYPD data, which also tracks arrests made by certain federal policing agencies including Amtrak within New York City, shows there were eight arrests by the national railroad’s police force for public lewdness at Penn Station during the first five months of the year.
In June, which is Pride month and the most recent month for which data is available, that shot up to 23 arrests. Attorneys and advocates say the arrests have continued escalating in the months since, with the Legal Aid Society tracking 20 public lewdness arrests in a single day in September.
In recent weeks, Sniffies users have tried to warn each other of the police crackdown.
“Undercover cops in bathroom,” one user wrote earlier this month. “I keep trying to warn the fellas but they act like they can’t read I was there when that shit happened it’s scary to witness the take down like that.”
“Stop playing in pen [sic] station,” another wrote. “They have undercover cops hiding in the bathrooms arresting people. It’s not funny it’s scary.”
Asked about public lewdness arrests in the Penn Station bathroom, Beth Toll, a spokesperson for Amtrak, said they’d recently “increased patrols at New York Penn Station to reinforce public safety” while “effectively curbing disruptive activity across the station.” Since June 1, she added, Amtrak police had made over 200 arrests, though she didn’t specify what those people were charged with or how many of those arrests happened inside the men’s room.
“Since implementing the heightened patrols, incidents have declined significantly. Amtrak remains committed to maintaining a safe and welcoming environment for all travelers and will continue to monitor conditions closely, making adjustments as needed to uphold the highest standards of security.”
Toll didn’t immediately return a request for further comment on David’s description of his arrest.
From Amtrak Custody to ICE
The CITY learned of at least one case where Amtrak Police handed a person arrested in that bathroom directly to ICE.In that case, immigration attorney Danney Salvatierra said her client, a Mexican man with a U.S. citizen spouse who was in removal proceedings but had a pending asylum claim, was arrested while using the bathroom in Penn Station in early July.
A document later provided to Salvatierra said Amtrak Police had arrested her client and immediately taken him to 26 Federal Plaza — the federal building in Lower Manhattan — to hand him off to ICE. The document made no mention of any charge filed against him. The man ended up spending more than a month in immigration detention before an immigration judge sided in his favor and he was released.
While NYPD officers are bound by New York City’s sanctuary city policies, Amtrak Police are federal officers who do not have to abide by those protections even when working inside of the city.
Amtrak Men’s restroom at 34th Street Penn Station. Tuesday, September 23, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
While the Trump administration has deputized several federal agencies to participate in immigration enforcement efforts, Amtrak’s apparent involvement in them has not been reported until now.
Amtrak is a quasi-governmental corporation controlled by the federal government.
Toll, the spokesperson for Amtrak, did not respond to a request about Amtrak Police handing people off they had detained to ICE.
Spokespeople for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security didn’t return requests for comment right away.
‘False Arrests Without Probable Cause’
Word has been spreading about the crackdown in recent weeks. A New York Post report earlier this month described an NYPD sergeant arrested for masturbating in the Penn Station bathroom by Amtrak police in what the paper termed a “sting operation.” Last week, Jared Trujillo, an assistant professor at CUNY School of Law, took to TikTok to warn people using the Penn Station bathroom, which garnered 325,000 views.“There is a real assault on all of our civil rights when you can’t even pee without the risk of having an arrest that could impact everything from your immigration status to your ability to work,” he told THE CITY.
The bathroom in question is near the Eighth Avenue entrances to Penn Station, and directly next to an Amtrak police booth. The men’s bathroom, unlike the women’s bathroom a few feet away, has a large warning sign next to the entrance: “This facility is monitored 24/7 by uniformed and undercover Amtrak Police Department Officers.”
Sending plain clothes officers into bathrooms to combat public lewdness isn’t new. In 2022, the Port Authority Police, a state agency, had to halt their use of undercover officers staking out bathrooms following a settlement in a lawsuit by the Legal Aid Society claiming the tactic had spurred years of false arrests and unlawful discrimination.
In that case, Jennvine Wong, an attorney with Legal Aid’s Special Litigation Unit, said officers were “targeting folks on this random officer’s perception of what their sexuality might appear to be, and quite often wasn’t based on probable cause.”
That lawsuit, however, had no impact on the Amtrak Police, and this new wave of what she said were “eerily similar … false arrests without probable cause based on discriminatory targeting of folks because of their perception of their sexuality.”
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