Federal, state, and local lawmakers are demanding answers from Amtrak after The City and Gothamist reported that the Amtrak police had arrested “[n]early 200” men since early June for lewdness in a Penn Station men’s bathroom and sent as many as 20 to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), where they face possible deportation.
“As elected officials representing the neighborhoods surrounding the Penn Station complex, we write to express our outrage regarding recent reporting that Amtrak, through the Amtrak Police, has initiated an organized arrest campaign at a men’s bathroom at Penn Station targeting members of the LGBTQ community using undercover plainclothes police officers,” wrote Congressmember Jerry Nadler, State Senator Liz Krueger, and two out gay state lawmakers: Assemblymember Tony Simone and State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal. All four are Democrats.
The Sept. 26 letter to Richard Harris, Amtrak’s president, notes that “Amtrak Police made 23 arrests for ‘public lewdness’ at Penn Station in June 2025 and is now making up to 20 such arrests per day. The reporting also indicates that many of these charges have been ultimately dropped but only after LGBTQ New Yorkers have been handcuffed and arrested.”
In a separate Sept. 25 letter, Councilmember Erik Bottcher, who represents a Manhattan district that includes Penn Station, and Councilmember Tiffany Cabán, who represents a Queens district, also wrote to Harris calling on “Amtrak to immediately cease these discriminatory policing practices. We further request a written explanation of how these arrests have been conducted, how many people have been affected, and what safeguards Amtrak will put in place to prevent further violations of civil rights.” Bottcher and Cabán are Democrats and serve as co-chairs of the City Council’s LGBTQIA+ Caucus.
Law enforcement has a long history of harassing and arresting gay and bisexual men and gender non-conforming people on dubious charges in men’s rooms, public parks, and other public venues. Activists who have objected to these arrests have said that police often use boiler plate language in criminal complaints that is little more than an exercise in copy and paste, suggesting that those arrested in these stings behaved in exactly the same way prior to being arrested.
Police often use anti-gay slurs, ignore the requirements of state law when making these arrests, and generally go out of their way to make the experience as unpleasant as possible for the men they arrest. In these Penn Station arrests, one man who was arrested with two other men told The City that he heard one officer say to others “Yeah, we got three more fag pervs.”
The Port Authority Police Department, which is not the Amtrak police, has been sued by The Legal Aid Society and at least one private attorney for harassing and arresting gay men in the Port Authority in midtown and in the World Trade Center.
Mike Spiegel, a private attorney, successfully sued the Port Authority in the World Trade Center for harassing and arresting Alejandro Martinez in 2000. The Legal Aid Society successfully sued the Port Authority Police Department in 2017 on behalf of two men, leading to a settlement in 2022.
Responding to the current arrests, The Legal Aid Society said in a statement, “We are deeply disturbed by the surge in public lewdness arrests that appear to target LGBTQ+ New Yorkers. Our caseload reflects this troubling pattern, especially since the start of summer — including 20 arrests in a single day this September. Too often, these arrests are based on an officer’s perception of a person’s sexual orientation rather than on probable cause.”
The large reported number of those arrested by the Amtrak police recently, “[n]early 200,” is extraordinary. (I have been reporting on this kind of police activity since 1987 and I have never seen a number that high before.) The reports that the Amtrak police delivered some men to ICE come after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller stated earlier this year that the Trump administration was “looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day.”
On Sept. 27, an Amtrak spokesperson responded to an initial query from Gay City News. A follow-up email from Gay City News asked if Amtrak police has assisted ICE in meeting that quota and how many other Amtrak facilities were participating. Gay City News had not received a response by late on Sept. 29.
