Olga Fedorova/AP Photo
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander is placed under arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and FBI agents outside federal immigration court on Tuesday, June 17, 2025, in New York.
A gang of masked federal agents swarmed, manhandled, and detained New York City Comptroller Brad Lander Tuesday afternoon, as he sought to assist a defendant out of immigration court. Agents refused to give their names or agencies before they forced Lander into an elevator. They also took the New York City police officer who had been accompanying Lander as his security detail. Lander was released about five hours later.
“I’m happy to report, I am just fine. I lost a button. But, you know, I’m going to sleep in my bed tonight safe with my family. I’m grateful to hear that the charges are not being brought, but if they are, I’ve got a lawyer, I don’t have to worry about my due process rights,” Lander said at a press conference after he was released.
Standing near Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), Lander told the crowd how ICE agents had separated him from a defendant he had just met, Edgardo, who is now in immigration detention.
“He’s not going to sleep in his bed tonight. So far as I know, he has no lawyer. He has been stripped of his due process rights by a government and a judge that owe him a credible fear hearing before they deport him,” Lander said. “I will be fine, but Edgardo is not going to be fine, and the rule of law is not fine, and our constitutional democracy is not fine.”
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The attack on Lander, who is running for mayor, is the latest instance of political violence against opposition party members, which has included the arrests of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver, after law enforcement attacked them outside an ICE facility; the arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly helping an immigrant avoid federal agents; and the brief detention of Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), whom agents wrestled to the floor for the sin of asking Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question.
Like Lander, all of them objected to the Trump administration’s immigrant terror campaign, which Lander’s wife, Meg Barnette, excoriated at an impromptu press conference shortly after his detention. She had accompanied Lander for his third trip to 26 Federal Plaza to observe immigration proceedings and described proceedings designed to confuse and disorient vulnerable people before upending their lives.
“What was going on in those courtrooms is absolutely unacceptable,” Barnette said, adding that the judge “chastised” them for entering a public courtroom and said that in the future she was planning on locking the door to it. “It is a place of intimidation, it is a place of fear.”
She and Lander sat in a number of courtrooms, watching defendants getting their cases dismissed “with completely inadequate explanation” of what that meant. No one told defendants, for example, that a dismissal of their case subjected them to forcible removal by anonymous masked agents once they stepped out of the courtroom, Barnette said.
“That is not the rule of law. That is not due process. That is not acceptable in this country or anywhere else,” she said. “I am very rattled, frankly.”
“What is happening is they are kidnapping our neighbors off the street.”
In one instance, the proceeding for a man whose native language was Yoruba was held in French. The judge dismissed his case and “it was clear he had no understanding” of what had happened, Barnette said. Then he was sent out into the hall, where immigration agents were waiting.
Edgardo, the person Lander was helping when ICE agents attacked, spoke Spanish. The judge dismissed his case but said he had the right to appeal and gave him a date in July.
“So the guy thinks he has a month to appeal,” Barnette said. “Nobody says, ‘ICE is waiting for you on the other side of the door.’”
Lander and others linked arms with Edgardo to walk him to safety, she said, but agents swarmed the group, said they were an “obstruction,” pushed Barnette out of the way, dogpiled Lander, shoved him into a wall, and forced him into an elevator. In videos posted to social media, Lander can be heard repeatedly asking agents if they had a judicial warrant.
“You don’t have authority to arrest U.S. citizens. You don’t have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens,” Lander said as agents grabbed him and muscled him around while telling him to stop obstructing them. “I’m not obstructing, I’m standing right here in the hallway. I asked to see the judicial warrant … You don’t have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens asking for a judicial warrant.” (Technically, immigration officers can arrest anyone “for any offense against the United States” committed in their presence, though whether asking for a warrant upholds that standard is questionable.)
It’s not only the courtroom treatment of defendants that’s egregious. So are the living conditions at 26 Federal Plaza. In an interview with the Prospect, Daniel Coates, director of public affairs at Make the Road New York, said that ICE is using the building to hold people for multiple days before transferring them elsewhere, packing them in so tightly that some have no room to sleep except for on the bathroom floor. The rooms are hot because the air-conditioning is inadequate, detainees have “no opportunities to get a change of clothes or clean themselves,” have no access to medical treatment, and cannot maintain their dietary restrictions, said Coates, who spoke at the press conference held after Lander’s detention.
“The space is exploding,” Coates said, “and it’s sort of a black hole there because ICE is refusing entry to members of Congress,” who are supposed to be allowed to oversee such buildings. It’s an open question of “what actually 26 Federal Plaza is being used for,” he said.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
Multiple elected officials joined Barnette and spoke out against Trump’s mass deportations. New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams reiterated Barnette’s observation that immigration officials were luring people in with lies.
“What is happening is they are kidnapping our neighbors off the street. They are bamboozling them, they are tricking them,” Williams said. Agents are telling people to come to the courthouse as if something good will happen, “then they’re faced with people in fatigues and masks on their faces and they're taken,” without understanding if they have any recourse.
Speakers said that if immigration agents were comfortable abusing an elected official in public, listeners should imagine what they’re doing to regular civilians in private. State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who is running for mayor and who cross-endorsed Lander, said that although considerable attention is spent on ICE violence in California, the same cruelty is happening in New York, as Lander illustrated.
Mamdani noted that immigration agents recently snatched a Bronx high schooler when he went to a routine hearing, and that New Yorker Mahmoud Khalil is still in prison, three months after agents snatched him, even though a judge ruled that the reasons for his detention are insufficient and probably unconstitutional.
“ICE has no interest in the law, it has no interest in order,” Mamdani said. “It only has an interest in terrorizing people across this country.”
Councilmember Tiffany Cabán told the audience that ICE is a rogue agency and urged New Yorkers to protect each other.
“And if you are part of the government, if you are a government official, if you are a member of the military, understand, you do not have to obey illegal orders,” she said. “And so we are asking you to take that oath of service to your community members, to this country, to this city, very seriously. And protect ourselves, protect our neighbors, protect each other. Release the comptroller now and get ICE the hell out of our city.”
When asked if Mayor Eric Adams had a comment regarding Lander’s detention, a spokeswoman told the Prospect via email that “today should not be about Brad Lander.”
“It’s about making sure all New Yorkers—regardless of their documentation status—feel safe enough to use public resources, like dialing 911, sending their kids to school, going to the hospital, or attending court appearances, and do not instead hide in the shadows,” the spokesperson wrote.
Hochul, meanwhile, said Lander’s detention was “bullshit.”
