AMSTERDAM: A picture of an Ecuadoran family separated when US immigration agents arrested the father following a court hearing won the 2025 World Press Photo of the Year Award on Thursday.

The photo, taken by Carol Guzy of the ZUMA Press agency and iWitness for the Miami Herald, shows the moment Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers hauled away Luis, as his family claws at his shirt to keep him back.

The jury selected the image from a larger body of photos taken by Guzy in a corridor outside a courtroom in New York where families were often separated following hearings, sparking emotional scenes.

“To have documentation of what’s going on, that people can actually be really disappeared without there being a record of it, to hold both the agents and their agencies accountable, I think it’s an absolutely valuable role that the press is playing in that courthouse,” Guzy said.

The jury sifted through 57,376 photographs from 3,747 photojournalists to select 45 prize-winning shots from around the world.

The winning photo, Separated by ICE, is a “powerful example of why independent photojournalism matters,” according to Joumana El Zein Khoury, executive director of World Press Photo.

“In a democracy, the camera’s presence in that hallway serves as a witness to a policy that has turned courthouses into sites of shattered lives,” she added in a statement.

Saber Nuraldin from EPA Images was a finalist with a shot of Palestinians swarming over an aid truck in Gaza, scrambling to get flour during a brief pause in Israel’s blockade.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2026