The World Press Photo foundation has awarded its top honor to Separated by ICE, a harrowing image of two young girls clinging futilely to their father’s shirt as he is detained. Taken by independent photojournalist Carol Guzy in a hallway of New York’s Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, one of the few U.S. federal buildings where photography is permitted, the photograph has come to symbolize the human cost of President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The annual contest recognizes the most impactful photojournalism and documentary work produced over the past year: Separated by ICE, shot for the Miami Herald in August of 2025, was selected from 57,376 entries submitted by more than 3,000 photographers worldwide. According to the jury, Carol Guzy’s image won for its visceral encapsulation of the Trump administration’s controversial mass deportation effort, carried out by an emboldened U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The photograph captures the moment Luis, from Ecuador, was detained after his immigration court hearing—an ICE tactic widely decried by the ACLU as a bad-faith use of due process and as unnecessarily traumatizing for the families present.
A New York report on ICE detainments at 26 Federal Plaza, which also featured images of the same family separation, described a scene in which agents mill around the building’s immigration court with lists of targets—asylum seekers who have appeared, willingly and, as the story put it, “unwittingly,” for court summonses. Rulings by judges appear to have little effect on who is arrested, and ICE has provided no explanation for how it determines who is allowed to leave the courthouse with a future hearing date.
Speaking to the press, Luis’s family has maintained that he had no criminal record.
“Now more than ever, the media is a crucial link in documenting the effects of policy on real people at this pivotal time in America,” Carol Guzy, a multi-time Pulitzer Prize winner, said in a statement to the World Press Photo foundation.
Guzy added, “Agents stand outside courtrooms bearing photographs of their ‘quote-unquote’ targets. Traumatized children and spouses are caught in the crossfire, leaving broken families and a fearful immigrant community.”
TRAC Immigration reports that, as of April, more than 60,000 immigrants are currently held in detention nationwide, 70 percent of whom have no criminal conviction. This includes a soaring number of children, despite ICE’s own rules against placing minors in holding facilities absent violent or unlawful behavior.
World Press Photo global jury chair Kira Pollack described Carol Guzy’s winning image as “a record of quite literally a disappearance.”
“This picture is chaotic, it’s terrifying. It captures a very genuine expression of fear, terror, uncertainty, and powerlessness,” she said, adding, “It allows us to look in. We cannot unsee it.”
