Masked federal officers wrangled New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander and placed him in handcuffs inside an immigration courthouse in Manhattan on Tuesday.
The city’s elected financial watchdog who is among Democratic candidates for mayor entered the public federal building to observe immigration hearings when he was accosted by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers as well as FBI and Treasury Department agents wearing face coverings.
Homeland Security officials accused Lander of assaulting and impeding an officer.
Lander was released from federal custody several hours later. He told reporters outside a federal building in downtown Manhattan that the charges against him were dropped.
“I am happy to report I am just fine. I lost a button,” he said. “The rule of law is not fine. And our constitutional democracy is not fine.”
In his first interview since he was released from detention, Lander told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Tuesday evening that “nobody’s safe right now.”
As a former member of the New York City Council, Lander formerly represented a Bangladeshi neighborhood he said would tell him “we came the right way,” he told Hayes.
“But this shows there’s no right way,” said Lander, referring to federal law enforcement targeting immigrants at courthouses.
“These folks are doing things the right way,” he said. “They did what they were supposed to. Nobody’s safe right now.”
Lander told Hayes that Donald Trump “ is trying to escalate conflict.”
“He wants to bait and provoke,” he said.
Lander’s arrest comes days after federal agents roughed up California Senator Alex Padilla and handcuffed him on the ground as he interrupted a press conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to question her about protests against ICE mass enforcement in his state.
Padilla was speaking on the floor of the U.S. Senate about his own experience when plain-clothes federal agents descended on Lander.
Lander had linked arms with his staff and an immigrant targeted for arrest moments after a court hearing. As agents moved in to pull Lander away from the hallway, he shouted out “show me your warrant, show me your badge.”
“I will let go if you show me a judicial warrant,” he can be heard saying in footage of his arrest. “I would like to see the warrant, and then I will let go.”
Lander repeatedly asked agents where he was being taken and under what authority, as immigration enforcement officers do not have authority to arrest U.S. citizens.
“I’m not obstructing, I am standing right here in the hallway,” he said. “You don’t have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens asking for a judicial warrant.”
A reporter from New York’s The City newsroom overheard one agent say to another, minutes before Lander’s arrest, “Do you want to arrest the comptroller?”
Homeland Security deputy secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Lander was trying to “undermine law enforcement safety to get a viral moment.”
“No one is above the law, and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences,” she said in a statement.
Lander dismissed claims that he had assaulted an officer.
“You guys all saw it on video. You know what happened,” he told reporters after he was released. “I certainly did not assault an officer.”
“It’s bull****,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters at a separate briefing following news of Lander’s arrest. “What the hell is happening to this country?”
Speaking outside the federal building in downtown Manhattan, Lander’s wife, Meg Barnette, said an immigration court judge had “chastised” Lander and others for entering the courtroom and threatened to lock the door.
Lander has observed court proceedings several times, and Barnette joined him Tuesday after she was “moved and horrified” by his stories from inside immigration courts, where immigrants’ cases are often swiftly dismissed with inadequate instructions and then subject to their immediate removal, she said.
After Lander left the courtroom with staff, agents swarmed him and an immigrant whose case was dismissed as they stood in the hallway, she said.
“I know in all likelihood he’s going to be OK, and all the other folks in that building are risking having their families torn apart with inadequate explanation. It’s an abomination,” she said. “What I saw was shocking and unacceptable ... What I saw today was not the rule of law. That was not due process.”
Speaking to reporters after he was released from custody, Lander said he witnessed a Yoruba-speaking immigrant learning his case was dismissed through a French translator.
Another immigrant he linked arms with was also taken into custody, and, unlike Lander, does not have a lawyer, and was “stripped of his due process rights by a government and a judge who owe him a credible fear hearing before they deport him.”
Lander said he would not “allow Donald Trump to wreck the rule of law … and turn our country into something that doesn’t meet its obligations to international law.”
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams condemned what he called “immoral” immigration enforcement under the Trump administration and urged officials to release Lander.
“What is happening in this country, what is happening in that building, is simply unacceptable,” he told reporters. “It is immoral. We should not just abide by immoral orders from an immoral president.”
Lander — arrested in the middle of the early voting period in the primary race for New York City mayor — is among a slate of progressive candidates uniting against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is polling above Lander and progressive state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani. Democratic candidates hope to oust incumbent Mayor Eric Adams in the city’s general election later this year.
The city utilizes ranked-choice voting, allowing voters to select their top picks for citywide elections on their ballots. Mamdani and Lander joined forces to ask their supporters to each rank the candidates in the top two slots.
“This is not about an election. This is about ensuring that we protect the city and the country we love,” Mamdani told reporters outside the federal building following Lander’s arrest.
“This is about ensuring that immigrant New Yorkers who come here for regular check-ins do not need to fear being separated from their families in the most brutal and cruel ways imaginable,” he said. “Today’s arrest is but one example of what ICE is doing every single day across the country.”
Cuomo called Lander’s arrest “the latest example of the extreme thuggery” from Trump’s “out-of-control” ICE.
“One can only imagine the fear families across our country feel when confronted with ICE,” he said in a statement. “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.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James called Lander’s arrest “profoundly unacceptable.”
“No one should face fear and intimidation in a courthouse, and this is a grotesque escalation of tensions,” she said in a statement.
New York Immigration Coalition president Murad Awawdeh called Lander’s arrest “an outrageous abuse of power and a dangerous obstruction of justice.”
“For federal agents to forcibly arrest and detain an elected official simply escorting an immigrant New Yorker out of court is a deliberate attempt to intimidate, silence, and criminalize those who seek to stand up and protect our immigrant neighbors,” Awawdeh said in a statement.
The Trump administration has directed immigration judges — who operate outside of the federal judicial branch and are under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice — to swiftly grant motions to dismiss immigrants’ cases rather than grant what was a standard 10-day period for immigrants to respond.
Once those cases are dismissed, targeted immigrants can then be placed in expedited removal proceedings, making them vulnerable to deportation before they have a chance to appeal for asylum or other legal relief.
ICE agents and other federal officers in recent weeks have swarmed courthouses to make those arrests immediately.
Lander says he plans to keep observing immigration court hearings.
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