New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, a Democratic candidate for mayor, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Lower Manhattan Tuesday after obstructing their attempt to detain a criminal defendant who was leaving court.
A video of the incident posted to Lander’s social media account by his wife, Meg Barnette, shows Lander physically hanging onto the defendant among the crowd of federal agents while the agents attempt to take the defendant into custody.
“I will let go when you show me the judicial warrant,” Lander said to an agent. “Where is it?”
Agents then separate Lander from the defendant, push him against a wall and place handcuffs on him.
Lander was released several hours later on Tuesday afternoon, according to the New York Times.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE, said in a statement posted on X that Lander was arrested for allegedly assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.
“No one is above the law, and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences,” the statement said.
New York Attorney General Letitia James called the detention unacceptable in a statement.
“Arresting Comptroller Lander for the simple act of standing up for immigrants and their civil rights is a shocking abuse of power,” she said in a statement. “No one should face fear and intimidation in a courthouse, and this is a grotesque escalation of tensions. The administration’s rampant targeting of New Yorkers only makes our communities less safe.”
Lander’s opponents for the Democratic mayoral nomination also condemned the detention and called for his release.
“This is the latest example of the extreme thuggery of Trump’s ICE out of control — one can only imagine the fear families across our country feel when confronted with ICE,” former New York Governor and NYC mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo wrote on X. “Fear of separation, fear of being taken from their schools, fear of being detained without just cause. This is not who we are. This must stop, and it must stop now.”
The arrest follows a series of recent confrontations between federal agents and Democratic politicians over immigration enforcement.
Little more than a month ago, Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested on a trespassing charge outside a federal immigration detention center. The charge was shortly dropped by interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba. In a separate incident, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla was handcuffed and forcefully removed from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles last week after he interrupted Noem’s opening remarks.
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