Biography
Yehonatan Ovadia is an Israeli-born Satmar Hasidic religious teacher and father of five who moved to the United States on a religious-worker visa in 2022. He participated in anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian demonstrations in New York and New Jersey. After a November 2023 protest at Ramapo Town Hall, he was charged with hate-crime counts tied to the removal of an Israeli flag; those counts were dropped, and in February 2024 he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and paid a fine. U.S. immigration authorities later cited that protest when they denied an extension of his status. ICE arrested Ovadia after an immigration-court appearance in Manhattan on August 28, 2026. He remains detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn while facing removal to Israel. His habeas lawyers argue that the government retaliated against protected political and religious speech.
Sources
- New York Jewish Week — immigration detention and protest history
- Ovadia v. Francis habeas docket — August 28, 2026 detention chronology
Portrait provenance
The portrait is cropped from the person explicitly identified at the left of the group photograph in Joseph Strauss/JTA’s report published by The Jerusalem Post on October 1, 2026. Credit: courtesy Eric Lee. The crop retains original pixels from the published news image and excludes the other demonstrators. No retouching, upscaling, or generated detail. Existing case details are unchanged.
