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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Brad Lander Managed His Arrest Just Fine. What He Saw in the Interrogation Room Broke Him.
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Brad Lander thought he was making another trip to Manhattan's immigration court on Tuesday to protest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's detentions and deportations of undocumented people in New York. Instead, the city's Democratic comptroller and mayoral contender was shoved against a wall by masked ICE agents, handcuffed, led through the same corridors where he'd been escorting immigrants only moments earlier, and detained for roughly five hours. Federal officials claimed he had 'assaulted' and 'impeded' their officers, though Lander was released without charges. Gov. Kathy Hochul sought to intervene and branded the episode 'bullshit.' New York Attorney General Tish James called it 'a shocking abuse of power.' Rival candidates Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo both condemned the arrest. With early voting for the Democratic primary opened, and more than 130,000 ballots already in, voters are now looking at images of a would-be mayor in zip ties. Barely 24 hours after walking out of 26 Federal Plaza, I called Lander to talk through the arrest, what exactly happened, and how the experience could reshape the last stage of his campaign. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Aymann Ismail: What were you doing inside 26 Federal Plaza on Tuesday? Brad Lander: So this was the third time I've done it. I've gone each of the last three weeks as a part of a friend of the court program organized by Immigrant ARC that asks people to come down and bear witness to immigration hearings and, in some cases, escort people out of the building. About three weeks ago, the Department of Homeland Security changed their policy. They dismissed people's cases, stripped them of their asylum-seeker status, and subjected them to expedited removal. I've been able to escort five individuals or families out of the building without incident, and that felt great. But in this instance, following what's happened to Sen. Alex Padilla and to Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and others, they decided to arrest me. It's a sign of Trump's creeping authoritarianism and of the threats to our democracy. Did the ICE agents give you any warning? Was there anything different about the case of yesterday? ICE agents mill around the elevator bank. When I came up in the elevator yesterday before I even got to the floor, as soon as the doors open, a group of ICE agents were holding someone that they were detaining. We knew this was a possibility in every case, and at least in my limited experience so far, the seven people that I've accompanied, you don't know whether they're going to come grab the person or not until you turn the corner into the elevator lobby. Walk me through what was happening in that exact moment when ICE agents grabbed you. At first, I had spent a minute talking to Edgardo [the man he was escorting] as another volunteer explained what was going on. I could see how scared he was, and I was just hoping I'd be able to walk him out of the building. Then when the ICE agent started surrounding us and grabbing him, I did what I had been trained to do. I asked to see the judicial warrant. It all moved pretty quickly from there. Reportedly an agent said before your arrest, 'You want me to arrest the comptroller?' I did not hear that. I know that's been reported. I had not heard that at the time. I was asking for the warrant, and one agent said, 'I have the warrant.' That led me to say, 'Well, can I see it?' Otherwise, as you can see on the video, there was kind of a melee. And volunteers are doing more of the talking, asking for badge numbers, asking for the warrant, asking on what authority they were arresting him. This is part of the problem. In an arrest done by uniformed officers in an appropriate way, they name the person and explain on what authority they are making an arrest. And none of that happened yesterday. What was happening in your mind in that exact moment? I was trying to stay focused on Edgardo. There's an important tradition of bearing witness, of nonviolent civic action, of saying, 'I am going to object when people's rights are being stripped away from them.' I was focused on that: Asking the questions about where the authority comes from, objecting to the due-process violations, insisting that the rule of law be followed. That was what was in my head. Homeland Security accused you of assaulting and impeding federal officers. What do you make of that accusation? The video making its way around the internet quite clearly shows that that was not the case. I only learned of that once I got out. I was surprised by it, yes, because it's so patently not what the video shows happened. What happened once you were detained? What kind of facility did they take you into? Were you detained with anybody else? What was that experience like? They brought me to just a room, like an interview room—imagine a Law & Order interview room—most of the time with one ICE police officer just sitting. I didn't have my phone. I was just sitting there for four hours. It's true that we're such creatures of our phones that four hours without one is notable. I was going over in my head what had happened. There were posters on the wall of the room, like, 'Wash your hands before you leave the bathroom,' except that the posters on the wall of this room said, 'Are you a parent who is detained and separated from your children?,' in both English and Spanish. It is horrifying that we have normalized family separation to the point that there's a standard bilingual poster for it on the walls of the interview room and detention rooms in federal immigration courthouses. And the information is not helpful. It's like, 'Here's a hotline number, good luck to you.' The fact that it's a standard enough situation that we are separating parents from their kids that we've designed a bilingual poster to put on the walls as though somehow that excuses behavior that is really torture—yeah, it is enraging. Gov. Kathy Hochul called the arrest 'bullshit.' Were you surprised by that? I was grateful that the governor came down and helped get me out, and even more grateful that she announced $50 million for legal services for people like Edgardo who are facing deportation without lawyers. I was honored to be there for him, but what would've been way better for him was having a lawyer who could actually assert his rights and file his appeal. This is not a small issue. Forty percent of New Yorkers are immigrants. Fifty percent live in mixed-status households, including a million children, and making sure that they can't have their rights ripped out from under them is something that the city and the state have to be doing. Eric Adams continues to bring shame to himself and our city by showing that he's on the side of Trump and the ICE agents. The New York Times reported ICE didn't legally need the warrant you said it did. Was there confusion there? I'm not an immigration attorney. I was asking questions that I had been trained to ask. It is good for individuals when ICE comes to ask to see a judicial warrant, but I also will say I'm not an immigration attorney, and whatever the situation turns out to be, it can't be acceptable that people did everything right, presented themselves at the border, had a hearing, came to their hearing, filed their asylum application, and then just because DHS says, 'Ah, we're going to dismiss the case,' all of a sudden have no rights at all and can be disappeared into detention and deported with no rights whatsoever. That's why I was just asking for some due process. You mentioned Sen. Alex Padilla was detained in Los Angeles under similar circumstances, and Mayor Ras Baraka in New Jersey, too. Do you see this as targeted toward Democratic politicians defending immigration rights? Attorney General Pam Bondi has said on the record that their intention is to quote-unquote 'liberate' Democratic cities from their elected officials. That is Orwellian speak for authoritarian domination to say the federal government is going to come arrest elected officials who are either asking questions as Sen. Padilla was, or trying to enforce their local laws as Ras Baraka was, or observing in a court and asking for a judicial warrant as I was. I think that Donald Trump is coming after our cities and our democracy, and I think it's an important moment for leaders to step up, which is why I was glad that Congress members Nadler and Goldman went down to observe in court today. I hope other elected officials will do it, too. I hope other people will sign up with Immigrant ARC to bear witness and be escorts themselves. They can make examples of Sen. Padilla and Mayor Baraka and me. But if Americans by the thousands, by the millions, show up as we did over the weekend at the No Kings march in peaceful, nonviolent witness, we can respond to this moment of crisis with a love of our democracy and what it means to be governed by the rule of law. That's what we got to do. If you become mayor, where will you draw the line between New York City's sanctuary policies and cooperating with federal law enforcement? Our sanctuary laws are clear and appropriate. If an individual has been convicted of a serious or violent defense, then the New York City sanctuary city laws instruct cooperation with ICE. In investigating a criminal activity, both local and federal government have a role to play, depending on the case and the scope and the charges. But where people have not been convicted of a serious or violent defense, our laws do not permit collaboration between New York City personnel or contractors and federal immigration agents. And I will not allow it. I won't allow ICE in our schools or our public hospitals or our shelters as necessary. I'll put my body on the line as I did yesterday. I want to provide more legal resources so that folks have attorneys to know what to do in their cases. If parent coordinators in schools can offer to families connections to community-based legal organizations, that'll help people come to court more ready so that somebody like Edgardo or Zed or Maria and Manuel or the other families that I've met and the thousands in court every day. New York City can help make sure they have lawyers if they're facing deportation proceedings, and get the information they need to make good choices. That's what we should be doing. The only way New York City can stand up for the values reflected by that statue in the harbor is if we're doing better to live up to them. We need to deliver affordable housing and safe neighborhoods and good streets and transportation to all New Yorkers, whether they are here since birth or here since breakfast. That's what I'm going to do as mayor.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘New Yorkers have been betrayed': can Zohran Mamdani become the most progressive mayor in the city's history?
Zohran Kwame Mamdani is huddling with advisers surrounded by agitated protesters, New York police department (NYPD) officers and lines of metal barriers penning us in. An hour ago Brad Lander, the elected comptroller of New York who is running against Mamdani in the race to become the city's next mayor, was arrested by masked agents of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) as he accompanied an individual out of immigration court. Video shows the agents shoving Lander against a wall, handcuffing him, and scuffling him away. The incident has clearly rattled Mamdani. He looks tense, and when greeted by supporters his trademark beaming smile is replaced by a tight grin. Days earlier Mamdani cross-endorsed with fellow progressive Lander ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary, which makes this personal. 'This is horrifying,' he says. Behind us looms the brutalist tower of the Federal Building, its tombstone-grey granite and glass exterior wrapped in fine mist. It is a setting out of a dystopian Gotham City. 'No peace, no justice,' the protesters chant. 'Ice out of the court, Ice out of the city.' 'This is an authoritarian regime that has dispatched masked men in unmarked cars to detain and disappear as many immigrants as they can find, and anyone standing in their way,' Mamdani says. 'Ice agents attempted to rough up Comptroller Lander and make an example of him – if that's what they are willing to do to an elected official, what will they do to an unknown immigrant?' There is a potent family link too. 'That's the very court I took my father to a few months ago for his citizenship interview,' he explains. 'I hugged him tightly, not knowing if I would see him at the end or if he too would be detained, as so many immigrants have been. I waited in a coffee shop for four and a half hours hoping he would come downstairs, and he did.' It is not impossible, given the state of the race, that in three days' time Mamdani, until recently a virtual unknown, will prevail in the primary ballot and take a giant leap towards becoming the next occupant of Gracie Mansion. Should he go on to win the general election in November, he would be propelled onto the front lines of the battle to protect New Yorkers from Donald Trump's mass deportations and other legally-dubious incursions. Could he handle it? 'I do believe that I could. I will unabashedly stand up for our sanctuary city policies which have kept New Yorkers safe, and use every tool at the city's disposal to protect our immigrants.' And then he adds: 'There is no option of surrender.' That Mamdani should be a serious contender for the leadership of America's largest city is both a sign of the times and of his individual capabilities. Polls show him within striking distance of the frontrunner Andrew Cuomo in what is now essentially a two-horse race, with Lander trailing a distant third. Mamdani came to the US aged seven from Uganda where he was born to parents of Indian descent. His father is a political scientist Mahmood Mamdani, and his mother, Mira Nair, is the Oscar-nominated director of Salaam Bombay! and Monsoon Wedding. He is a democratic socialist endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He has been outspoken on the Gaza war, which he views as a genocide, and is unrestrained in his criticism of Trump, whom he calls an authoritarian. He denounced Lander's arrest as 'fascism'. He is equally scathing about the establishment of the Democratic party, which he tells me has 'betrayed' the people of New York. And yet here he is, an unashamed progressive Muslim immigrant, snapping at the heels of the ultimate Democratic machine politician, the thrice-elected former governor of New York, Cuomo. The outcome of the ranked-choice vote could illuminate so much more than the future of New York, important though that is. There's age. Mamdani, if elected, would become at 33 the youngest mayor in a century; Cuomo, 67, would be its oldest in a first term. Could this election deliver a blow to what Ocasio-Cortez has called the 'gerontocracy' of American politics? There's Trump. Lander's arrest could be just the start – only a day before the comptroller was apprehended, the president announced he was prioritizing deportations from New York and other Democratic-run cities, putting whoever wins the mayoral race in the line of fire. And there's the Democratic party itself. Mamdani calls the election a referendum on the future of the party – and given the parlous state in which it currently finds itself, trapped in the headlights of a president who appears hell-bent on destroying American democracy as we know it, he may not be wrong. This is gearing up to be a seismic clash at a turning point for the country. No wonder Mamdani looks tense. Our interview was not meant to be like this. The plan was for us to meet in Mamdani's campaign office near Madison Square Park, but the shock of the Lander arrest sends him scrambling down to Federal Plaza, the Guardian in hot pursuit. It's a bit like a game of cat and mouse. We follow the candidate as he moves away from Federal Building, and takes off with his posse of campaign managers to find a quiet place to talk. He says we'll regroup at a sandwich bar nearby then abruptly changes the location, but amid the confusion he's always impeccably polite. 'Thank you for your understanding,' he says to me. We finally get to sit down in a Le Pain Quotidien around the corner from where Lander is being detained. Mamdani asks if I mind that he eats while we talk – it's mid-afternoon by now and it's his first meal of the day. When I express sympathy, he gives a maudlin smile and says: 'I chose this.' We begin by discussing his explosive rise, from a barely known member of the state assembly representing Queens into a political phenomenon. The previous Saturday, at a rally at Terminal 5, a music venue in Hell's Kitchen, Mamdani was introduced by Ocasio-Cortez, who likened how he has burst onto the scene to her own unlikely eruption as Bronx bartender turned congresswoman in 2018. Did Mamdani expect to be where he is now when he launched his run last October? From the start he believed in the possibility of his campaign, he says, but did not expect his numbers to surge until the end. 'Instead we've been firmly in second place for the last few months, and we've narrowed a 40-point gap with Cuomo down to single digits despite Republican billionaires spending close to $20m in attack ads against me.' That Mamdani has caught the imagination of young New Yorkers is self-evident at the Saturday night rally. The venue is packed with over 3,000 supporters, most in their 20s and 30s, waving placards saying 'A City We Can Afford'. Comedian the Kid Mero hosts, a marching band performs Empire State of Mind, and the DJ plays hope and change-themed tracks (the rally closes with Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin'). It all has the razzmatazz of a premature victory party. Mamdani commands the stage, displaying an ease with TikTokable soundbites and a beguiling charisma which are essential qualifications for high office these days. He echoes the lyrical rhetoric of Barack Obama: when he wins on 24 June, he orates, 'it will feel like the dawn of a new day, and when the sun finally climbs above the horizon that light will seem brighter than ever'. A key to his success among young voters – and in turn, the amassing of a vast army of 46,000 volunteers who have knocked on more than a million doors – has been his savvy use of social media. He has posted a stream of viral videos, shot on gritty New York streets, infused with the humor and pace that he first honed during his younger years when he was an aspiring rapper going by the name of Mr Cardamom. To publicise his plan to freeze the rents of all rent-stabilised apartments, Mamdani posted a TikTok video in which he dives fully clothed into the frigid waters off Coney Island. It was titled: 'I'm freezing … your rent.' If I tell you that I'm going to freeze your rent, you know exactly what I mean Zohran Mamdani When Cuomo entered the mayoral race, Mamdani filmed in front of Trump Tower to visually connect the two men as bullies accused of sexual misconduct – Trump was found liable for sexual abuse, Cuomo was forced to resign as governor in 2021 following reports that he sexually harassed female staff, which he denies. Such grabby stuff has spawned a whole cluster of fan-based Instagram groups. Among them: Hot Girls for Zohran and, not to be outdone, Hot Boys for Zohran. Fun this may be. But it's also serious politics. It's earned him the adoration of countless young voters at a time when social media is increasingly critical to winning elections – just ask Trump who, with his 106 million X followers and his Truth Social platform, literally owns political social media, leaving most Democratic leaders languishing in the wilderness. 'New Yorkers of all ages are engaging with the world around them through their phones,' Mamdani says. 'One reason we've been able to get so many to engage with us is that they've heard about our politics in places they typically would not.' He calls his social media strategy the 'politics of no translation'. What is that? 'It's when you speak directly to the crises that people are facing, with no intermediaries in between. We need a politics that is direct, that speaks to people's own lives. If I tell you that I'm going to freeze your rent, you know exactly what I mean.' Mamdani puts his spectacular popularity with young New Yorkers down to a hunger for a 'new kind of politics, one that puts working people at the heart of it and showcases a new generation of leadership'. There's maybe something else also at play: he has a magnetism that just seems to draw people towards him. The young waiter who takes his order of grilled chicken salad appears starstruck, and after we finish talking the waiter comes back to the table and engages Mamdani in intense conversation. The candidate obliges, despite his frantic schedule that will see him dashing between boroughs late into the night. I get flashes of that magnetism as we sit at our table. Like any politician, Mamdani has his talking points, but he drops his guard when I ask him what he remembers about arriving in New York as a kid. He leans towards me, and his face opens, and he seems transported. 'I remember going to Tower Records around 66th Street or so, and browsing all the different CDS, then stepping outside and buying my first bootleg copy of Eiffel 65, the euro pop group with the song Blue (Da Ba Dee). I remember playing soccer in Riverside Park, I remember falling in love with chess.' Reverie over, Mamdani the mayoral candidate is back, shoveling down food in between espousing political strategy. And this is when we get down to it, and the real challenge he faces. Because his appeal to young New Yorkers is not enough to win. To defeat Cuomo on Tuesday he has to reach beyond young voters. He has to get to the older African Americans and Hispanics in the outer boroughs who dependably turn out to vote, and thus often decide the outcome of New York Democratic primaries. Polls suggest that such voters are still favouring Cuomo as a safe pair of hands, though there has been a recent uptick among older Latinos. Mamdani is candid about how hard this has been. 'It was very difficult for us to get into these spaces to make our case,' he admits. 'Especially as we began with 1% name recognition. But things are shifting, now we're finding that we are double-booked for churches on a Sunday morning.' Paradoxically, the outer borough communities that he has to convert are home to the very same voters with whom Trump made astonishing inroads last November. It's the guilty secret of New York, which is so proud of its status as a liberal bastion: Trump enjoyed his biggest swing of any state in the country here – about 11.5% – and increased his vote by double digits in both the Bronx and Queens. 'It wasn't just the scale of the swing,' Mamdani says. 'It was that it took place far from the caricature of Trump voters, and into the heart of immigrant New York.' After Trump's victory, Mamdani had to turn the political impulse of lecturing into listening and went on a listening tour to the outer boroughs. 'I went to Fordham Road in the Bronx and Hillside Avenue in Queens, and asked these New Yorkers, most of whom are Democrats, who they voted for and why. I learned that many did not vote, and many voted for Trump, and they did so because they remembered having more money in their pocket four years ago.' The plea he heard over and over again was for an economic agenda that would make people's tough lives easier. 'And that is how we have run this race,' he says. That's where his affordability ticket kicks in. Rents will be frozen in rent-stabilised apartments that house 2 million New Yorkers, two-thirds of whom are people of colour. Childcare will be provided at no cost, the minimum wage will be raised, city-run groceries will be opened offering cheaper healthy food, buses will be made fast and free. To pay for all that, taxes will be raised for corporations and for the top 1% of earners with incomes above $1m. When I ask him to imagine how he imagines New York would look after he had been in Gracie Mansion for two terms, he replies: 'It is a city that is more affordable, that works better, and where we have restored public excellence into public service.' New Yorkers have been betrayed by the politics of our city Zohran Mamdani Mamdani's affordability manifesto is a conscious blueprint for reconnecting working-class Americans, of all races, back to the Democratic party in the fight against Trump. It's also a damning indictment of where he believes the Democratic leadership has gone wrong. He goes so far as to use that word 'betrayal'. 'New Yorkers have been betrayed by the politics of our city,' he says. As evidence he points to Trump's deportations. We're still sitting in Le Pain Quotidien, Mamdani's salad now half-eaten and his tie off, and we are both painfully, though unspokenly, aware that Lander remains in custody as we speak (he was released a few hours later without charge). Up to 400,000 New Yorkers are at risk of Trump's deportations, he says, yet under the current Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, whose corruption charges were dropped by Trump in what was widely seen as a quid pro quo, the city has assisted fewer than 200 people facing imminent removal. Mamdani pledges that under his leadership, the city would provide legal representation for all immigrants in detention proceedings. That would boost their chances of going home to their families some elevenfold. His critique of the Democratic party doesn't end there. For him, Cuomo is the epitome of where the established party has gone off the rails. 'I believe we lost the presidential election because we had left the working class behind a long time ago. They were told time and time again that their leaders would fight for them, and those leaders, like Andrew Cuomo, sold them out.' He's in his flow now, his arms flapping in grand gestures of the sort that his staff have worked hard to get him to tone down. There's animation in his portrayal of Cuomo, containing a hefty dose of venom, and even disgust. 'We are considering electing a former governor who resigned in disgrace, one who cut Medicaid, stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA [which runs the subway], hounded the more than a dozen women who credibly accused him of sexual harassment even suing them for their gynecological records. It begs the question: what high ground do we have in the Democratic party when we critique Donald Trump?' Towards the end of his Terminal 5 rally speech, Mamdani warned his supporters to expect a barrage of negative attack ads from Cuomo and his billionaire backers in the closing stage of the race. But it's not just the barrage of TV ads that are attacking Zohran. The most withering criticism has come from the New York Times editorial board, which went so far as to opine that he didn't deserve a spot on the ballot. Mamdani swats that one away with the curt remark: 'These are the opinions of about a dozen New Yorkers. They're entitled to them.' The paper described his proposals as unrealistic. That's paradoxical, he says. Working-class Americans are losing faith in the Democratic party, yet anyone who comes up with policies that address their daily struggles is castigated for being pie in the sky. 'If you want to fight for working people priced out of their own city, then you are told you are out of touch.' The Anti-Defamation League, the Holocaust Museum, and several Jewish leaders have also blast out to scorch him in the final stretch. Shortly after we meet, a podcast is posted by the Bulwark in which Mamdani was asked whether he felt uncomfortable about the use by some pro-Palestinians of the phrase 'globalize the intifada', which has been condemned by some Jews as a call to violence. He would not denounce the expression, saying it spoke to 'a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights'. The comment led to rapid backlash from some Jewish groups. That was just the latest in a pattern in which, stepping outside a campaign tightly focused on affordability, he has been prepared to speak out about the highly contentious issue of the Middle East. What high ground do we have in the Democratic party when we critique Donald Trump? Zohran Mamdani He has decried the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, and championed the cause of Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestinian student activist at Columbia University who was released on Friday after more than three months detention on the orders of a federal judge. Given the nature of his economically-focused campaign, wouldn't it have been expedient to skirt around the issue of Gaza? . 'I have always been honest,' he says. 'I am honest because I believe it is incumbent upon us to have a new kind of politics, consistent with international law, and I believe there are far more New Yorkers looking for that consistency than one would imagine.' Mamdani has clearly been riled by the attacks made on him, which he calls Islamophobic. 'I have been smeared and slandered in clear racist language,' he says, pointing to mailers from a Cuomo-supporting super PAC which altered his face to be darker and his beard to be thicker (the super PAC denied any intentional manipulation). In the days after our interview, the NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force announced they are investigating threats made against Mamdani, by an unidentified man who said he was a 'terrorist' who is 'not welcome in America'. None of this is new for him. He's had to deal with Islamophobia since 9/11, when he was nine and had been living in the city for just two years. He was spared the worst of the anti-Muslim fallout of the attacks, he says, partly thanks to a kind teacher who pulled him aside and told him to let her know if he was ever bullied. But 9/11 left its mark. 'Living in the shadows of that moment, it politicized my identity. It forced a nine-year-old boy to see himself the way the world was seeing him.' That young boy is now three days away from a vote in which he seeks to become the first Muslim mayor of New York City. As he finishes up his salad and downs a cup of hot water with honey and lemon, before rushing off to his next engagement, he looks a strange mix of bone tired and fired-up for the battle ahead.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Authoritarian playbook': DHS accuses critics of assaulting officers when videos say otherwise
After New York City comptroller Brad Lander this week became the latest prominent Democrat to be arrested while monitoring and protesting US immigration authorities, the Trump administration trotted out a familiar refrain to justify his detention. The mayoral candidate had 'assaulted' law enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asserted, warning 'if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences'. The accusation, which DHS has also recently leveled against a member of Congress and a high-profile union leader, have sparked consternation, particularly as videos of the incidents did not show the officials attacking officers and instead captured officers' aggressive behavior and manhandling of the officials. In several cases, DHS's public accusations of assault were not followed by criminal charges. Civil rights advocates and scholars on policing say the government's assault claims against well-known members of the opposing party, and the repetition of those accusations, nonetheless are troubling indicators of rising authoritarianism. They argued the US government is blatantly misrepresenting events captured on footage in an effort to intimidate powerful officials and ordinary citizens alike who seek to challenge the White House's policies. And Alec Karakatsanis, the founder of Civil Rights Corps, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, argued: 'By relentlessly telling the population that 'two plus two equals five', it helps determine who is willing to go along with 'two plus two equals five' and deny basic truths. 'It's also about a longer-term and more profound assault on the very notion of truth – to get people so confused that they don't know what is what,' said Karakatsanis, author of Copaganda, a book about false narratives promoted by police. 'This is the classic propaganda tactic of George Orwell's 1984,' he added Lander was arrested by federal agents inside an immigration court building on Tuesday, as he asked officers whether they had a judicial warrant to detain an immigrant he was accompanying. He was released after four hours, and so far, no charges have been filed against him. Video of the encounter shows plainclothes officers, some in masks, pinning Lander to a wall, handcuffing him and escorting him away. Lander had held on to the arm of the immigrant who was being targeted. Still, DHS assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement to the press and on social media soon after the incident that it was Lander who had assaulted officers. The accusations echo those against US congresswoman LaMonica McIver, a Democrat, who, DHS claims, assaulted and impeded law enforcement when she and two other representatives arrived at a privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention center to inspect the facility on 9 May. Representatives are authorized to conduct this oversight without prior notice, and McIver said she wanted to ensure the facility was clean and safe and detainees had access to their attorneys. Shaky videos of the encounter, some released by DHS, showed a chaotic scrum where McIver and others were surrounded by officers, some masked, as law enforcement and the representative pushed against each other. Soon after, she was given a tour of the facility, but a month later was indicted for assault, a charge she has strongly denied. In Los Angeles, David Huerta, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) of California, was arrested on 6 June when he showed up to document an immigration raid at a garment factory. As he stood outside, blurry footage showed officers pushing him to the ground, with multiple agents on top of him as he was put in handcuffs. US attorneys charged him with conspiracy to impede an officer. He was not charged with assault, but even after the complaint was filed, DHS has continued to respond to questions about his case with a statement that says: 'Huerta assaulted Ice law enforcement.' Huerta was hospitalized after his arrest, before being transported to jail. And last week, California senator Alex Padilla was handcuffed and forcibly removed from a DHS press conference as he attempted to ask a question, with the FBI accusing him of 'resisting' law enforcement. He was not charged with a crime. In a statement to the Guardian on Thursday, McLaughlin said Democratic politicians were 'contributing to the surge in assaults of our Ice officers through their repeated vilification and demonization of Ice', adding: 'This violence against ICE must end.' DHS has repeatedly asserted in recent weeks that it has seen a major increase in assaults on its officers. Since May, the department has often cited the claim that Ice officers, who are part of DHS, are facing 'a 413% increase in assaults against them'. Spokespeople for DHS have repeatedly refused to respond to questions about the source of the statistic, how many assaults have occurred and what time periods it was comparing. In April, a press release had referred to a '300% surge in assaults'. McLaughlin, of DHS, said in an email late Thursday that Ice officers were 'now facing a 500% increase in assaults', but again did not respond to inquiries about the figure. Some experts on US law enforcement said DHS's narratives were rooted in a long legacy of law enforcement demonizing its critics, though the Trump administration's claims seemed increasingly brazen in their deviation from the truth. Andrea J Ritchie, co-founder of Interrupting Criminalization, a group of organizers that advocates against incarceration and other forms of criminalization, said US law enforcement has frequently prosecuted people who had been abused and injured by officers. 'How many videos exist of cops yelling, 'stop resisting', while someone has their hands up and the cops are beating them?' she said. Civil rights lawyers who take on police misconduct cases often refer to the 'trifecta' of charges – resisting arrest, assault on an officer and obstruction of justice, she said: 'The harder you get beaten, the more likely you'll get those charges.' What's new under Donald Trump, she said, was the frequency of these kinds of accusations against high-profile figures. Lauren Regan, an Oregon-based civil rights lawyer who has represented activists facing prosecution, said she saw arresting elected officials as part of an 'authoritarian playbook' designed to make people widely afraid that they, too, could be targeted, regardless of their backgrounds. 'You keep it chaotic and random so no one thinks they're safe,' said Regan. 'When elected officials with privilege, power, education and training get thrown to the ground and cuffed or jailed, then what is going to happen to us? Everyone is at risk.' It's a point that wasn't lost on Padilla, who said after his detention: 'If they can do this to a United States senator who has the audacity to ask a question, just imagine what they're doing to so many people across the country.' Indeed, since the recent protests against immigration raids began in LA, hundreds of demonstrators in southern California have been arrested by local police. Federal prosecutors have formally charged a handful of them assaulting officers – though soon after moved to dismiss two of the first cases they filed. In an incident of two protesters arrested at a 7 June demonstration, a video of the chaotic scuffle showed one of the protesters being shoved by an agent just before the arrests, and officers taking both protesters to the ground. US prosecutors charged both men with assaulting officers, but filed a motion to dismiss the charges a week later after one of them told the Guardian he had not attacked the agents, and was himself severely injured in the confrontation. Others have been blasted by DHS amid immigration enforcement actions in LA. Last week, the Los Angeles Times published video of border patrol agents detaining a 29-year-old US citizen outside his car repair shop. In the footage, the man repeatedly said he was an American citizen, but an agent pushed him into a metal gate. He was eventually released. After the LA Times published a story documenting rising 'fears of racial profiling', DHS sent out a press release calling it 'fake news', including a screenshot of video of the man's arrest, and saying: 'THE FACTS: 'The facts are a US citizen was arrested because he ASSAULTED US Customs and Border Protection Agents.' DHS did not respond to the Guardian's questions asking for clarification on what constituted assault in these incidents, instead re-sending the statements it had originally posted and shared on social media in the immediate aftermath of the arrests. Alex Vitale, sociology professor and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, said that while the public thinks of 'assault' as causing injury, in the context of arrests and prosecution, it can be a 'nebulous category' that includes 'unwanted physical conduct'. Cases can drag on for months, he added, no matter the strength of the evidence the government is presenting: 'Police understand that the arrest and the process is the penalty even if there's no conviction in the end.' Mike German, a former FBI agent and fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit, said that the government's repeated misinformation about violence against officers risks backfiring: 'Officers do at times get assaulted, but if agencies continue to make patently false claims and suggest that any physical contact is an assault, you're going to undermine legitimate cases.' He said he was also concerned about the impacts of officers using heavy force in arrests that don't require it: 'Three or four agents tackling a US senator clearly isn't necessary. That kind of force compels resistance. It's hard to let yourself be violently attacked without your natural reaction of trying to defend yourself, and then if officers say that's assault, that undermines public trust.' Ritchie, author of Invisible No More, a book about police violence against women of color, said she was not surprised that out of the recent prominent arrests, the only politician who continues to be prosecuted for assault is McIver: 'Black women get punished for speaking up and it's framed as assault.' She said it was crucial that communities continue to forcefully reject law enforcement narratives: 'They are trying to manufacture reality. It is upon us to say the government is lying to us. This is a message they are trying to send and we're not accepting it and certainly not normalizing it.'
New York Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Brad Lander is the very definition of an unprincipled political weasel
As the city comptroller, Brad Lander must surely know that fellow Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani can't possibly make good on his pricey promises. And if he tries, he might bankrupt the city. So will Lander finally be straight with New Yorkers and warn them of the dangers Mamdani poses? Ha. During the primary, the weaselly Lander kept his lips sealed about Mamdani's 'free' everything — about how much it would actually cost, the fact that a mayor isn't likely able to raise taxes enough to pay for it all and the fiscal and economic disasters that would follow if he did. Advertisement Surely Lander knew Mamdani's 'free-stuff' campaign was joke; if he didn't, he doesn't deserve to be comptroller, let alone mayor. Yet Lander stood arm-in-arm with his Working Families Party comrade, and even cross-endorsed him. Even as he ran against him in the primary. It's the very definition of a weasel. Advertisement Lander could've told the truth about Mamdani's promises: Free buses, like free lunches, would still have to be paid for. If funding is short, fewer buses will run. Oh, and expect many of the buses to turn into fetid mobile homeless shelters as they did in other cities. Making CUNY tuition-free would cost $1 billion while forcing the public colleges to eliminate degree programs and faculty positions. Advertisement A proposed $9 billion tax hike on corporations and the city's top 1% of households would fuel out-migration and shrink city revenue. Lander, by the way, didn't just stay silent about Mamdani's fiscal lunacy; he also refused to call out his socialist buddy's blatant antisemitism, even though the comptroller claims to be a proud Jew. We're not counting on Lander to spill the beans now about his spend-happy pal's fiscal recklessness, especially since he may be maneuvering for a post in a potential Mamdani administration. Advertisement More likely he'll keep radio silent. But here's the good news: Lander leaves office at year's end; if New Yorkers are lucky, they'll never hear anything from him again.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why was NYC comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander arrested by ICE?
(This story has been amended to include new information.) NEW YORK − Federal agents on June 17 arrested New York City comptroller and Democratic mayoral candidate Brad Lander as he attempted to escort a man out of immigration court. Lander's arrest is the latest standoff between federal agents and Democratic officials opposed to the Trump administration's tactics to detain mass numbers of immigrants. Video showed Lander link arms with the man that masked agents attempted to detain at a federal building in lower Manhattan. Lander repeatedly asked agents for a warrant used to detain the man before they arrested him. Federal officials said they arrested Lander for assault and impeding agents, and were investigating whether they would charge him with a crime. A reporter from The CITY, a nonprofit news outlet, first recorded the incident. Lander is the city's top financial officer and a candidate for mayor in the June 24 primary election. In a statement, Dora Pekec, a spokesperson for Lander's campaign, said Lander had been escorting a defendant out of immigration court. Lander was taken by masked agents and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. After over four hours in custody, Lander came out of the federal building alongside Gov. Kathy Hochul. Earlier in the day, he had been escorting migrants out of immigration court, he told supporters. He pointed out that 40% of New Yorkers are immigrants, including some of the agents who detained him. 'We're not just showing up for just a few families, or for the strength of our democracy,' Lander told supporters, speaking through a bullhorn. 'We are showing up for the future of New York City.' In an emailed statement, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said Lander 'was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.' McLaughlin said it was wrong for politicians seeking higher office to undermine law enforcement safety for 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. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said it is investigating the actions involving Lander. Federal law prohibits assaulting law enforcement, destroying property and obstructing official proceedings, Nicholas Biase, a spokesperson for federal prosecutors, said in an email. "The Department of Justice will prosecute violations of federal law," he said. The incident comes amid increasing federal immigration enforcement in New York's immigration courts and elsewhere across the country, as people show up for hearings or check-ins with immigration officials. On June 15, President Donald Trump directed ICE to increase its efforts to detain and deport migrants in Democratic-run cities. Immigration raids have triggered mass protests in cities across the country. Less than a week ago, federal officials forcibly removed Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California, from a press conference held by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem while he attempted to speak out about immigration enforcement. Video posted to social media showed a crowded hallway, where Lander was seen linking arms with the man being escorted by a few masked immigration agents. Lander could be heard repeatedly asking for a judicial warrant. Agents pulled Lander aside, separating him from the man. They pushed him against a wall and cuffed him. 'You don't have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens,' Lander said. He was then whisked away into an elevator, including with his New York City police detail, video showed. Democratic officials throughout NYC and the state swiftly condemned Lander's arrest. "This is a sorry day for New York and our country," Hochul told reporters. Several New York City officials, including those in the upcoming primary election, demonstrated outside the federal building, calling for Lander's release. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the front-runner in the mayoral race, said in a statement that ICE's conduct was the result of Mayor Eric Adams 'handing over the keys of our great city over to Donald Trump.' Adams, a former Democrat, faced federal corruption charges until the Justice Department dropped the case against him. Trump administration officials said the charges interfered with Adams' ability to enact the Trump administration's immigration priorities. The mayor has denied that any quid pro quo took place. 'Comptroller Brad Lander was doing absolutely nothing wrong when he was illegally detained, and he must be released now,' Cuomo said. Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for Adams, said today shouldn't be about 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," she said in a statement. New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, a Democrat running in the crowded primary, said on X that Lander's detention was "unacceptable and an abuse of power." "This is profoundly unacceptable," New York State Attorney General Letitia James said 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." Both the New York Civil Liberties Union and the New York Immigration Coalition, which have opposed the Trump administration's sweeping enforcement tactics, criticized agents detaining Lander. "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," Donna Lieberman, executive director of NYCLU, said in a statement. Eduardo Cuevas is based in New York City. Reach him by email at emcuevas1@ or on Signal at emcuevas.01. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NYC mayoral candidate Brad Lander arrested by ICE agents
