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Brad Lander, a progressive mayoral candidate for New York City who is also currently the city’s comptroller, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials on Tuesday after escorting a defendant out of an immigration courtroom.
Lander has been regularly walking people out of immigration courts to protect them from being detained by immigration officials. “The immigration courts are very chaotic right now,” Lander said in a statement last week. “There are masked FBI and ICE agents in the elevator banks waiting for people.”
Lander had spent Tuesday morning observing immigration court hearings. When he walked out of the courtroom, arm-in-arm with a male defendant, ICE officials in plainclothes and masks swarmed Lander and that individual, attempting to separate the two so they could arrest the man. Lander repeatedly asked to see a judicial warrant from the agents before he would comply with their demands.
“Do you have a judicial warrant? I would like to see the warrant, and then I will let go,” he told the officials.
After forcibly separating the two men, video shows immigration officials detaining Lander, shoving him against a wall and handcuffing him. One of the ICE officials told Lander he was being detained for “obstructing” their efforts to arrest the defendant. Lander rejected that premise, again saying that they should be providing a judicial warrant.
“I’m not obstructing, I’m standing right here in the hallway. … You don’t have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens asking for a judicial warrant,” Lander said.
Lander was then led down the hallway and taken into an elevator. The defendant he was with was also arrested.
Lander’s wife, Meg Barnette, was with him when the chaotic scene unraveled in the courthouse. She, too, was “shoved out of the way” during the event, she said.
“What I saw was shocking and unacceptable. What I saw today was not the rule of law,” Barnette later said at a pop-up press conference following her husband’s arrest.
New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who is also running for mayor, made an appearance at the press conference to speak out against Lander’s arrest. The two candidates have cross-endorsed each other in the citywide ranked-choice vote.
“This is fascism, and all New Yorkers must speak in one voice,” Mamdani said. “Release him now.”
Mamdani added:
[ICE] only has an interest in terrorizing people across this country. In this exact moment, New Yorkers and Americans are looking to leaders to meet this moment, to showcase the courage that is necessary … [Lander] showed us what leadership can look like and for that he was arrested.
New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman also condemned ICE’s actions.
“Arresting a public official, the duly-elected comptroller of the City of New York, for asking questions is dangerous intimidation and shows a wanton disregard for the will of the people of New York,” Lieberman said. It sends an unmistakably authoritarian message – that ICE doesn’t care about the rule of law and that anyone exercising their right to challenge ICE and speak up for immigrants will be punished.”
The individual Lander was with as he exited the courtroom had just had his immigration case dismissed. However, immigration officials have begun the practice of waiting for these individuals outside the courtrooms to detain them all over again, in an attempt to deport them under a separate authority called “expedited removal.” The practice is being used more often as part of President Donald Trump’s draconian immigration policies and his attempt to deport as many people as possible.
In a social media post after his arrest, the X account for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cited a tweet from Lander, regarding President Donald Trump’s conviction in 2024, to explain why he was arrested, alleging that he had acted violently toward ICE officials.
“No one is above the law, and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences,” that post read. “New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.”
Video of the incident does not appear to show Lander acting physically aggressive toward officers, only attempting to continue to stay arm-in-arm with the immigrant defendant.
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