New York mayoral candidate arrested by Ice: ‘Trump is looking to stoke conflict, weaponize fear’

As New York city comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was hauled away by masked Ice agents on Tuesday, all he could think about was whether there was anything more he could do for the man he was trying to help, an immigrant New Yorker named Edgardo.

Both men ended up detained, but unlike Edgardo’s, Lander’s ordeal was over after a few hours. By the time New York governor Katy Hochul marched him out of the courthouse – after proclaiming, of his arrest: “This is bullshit” – videos and photos of the officers manhandling him had gone viral. The arrest of yet another elected official prompted widespread condemnation of another sign of the US’s steady slide into authoritarianism. A host of New York politicians, along with a swelling crowd of angry New Yorkers, awaited Lander outside the courthouse in downtown Manhattan. (Andrew Cuomo, the former governor and mayoral race frontrunner, was a notable absence, though he did condemn the arrest.)

“I wasn’t surprised there were a lot of folks outside angry both about the violations of the rights of immigrants and about Trump’s efforts to undermine democracy,” Lander told the Guardian in an interview.

“The Trump administration has been very clear that they are looking to stoke conflict, weaponize fear, and undermine democracy, and here they are doing it,” he added.

Lander was “just fine”, he told the crowd. He had lost a button in the commotion. But he would sleep in his bed and while no charges against him were filed, he would have had access to a lawyer if they had been. “But Edgardo will sleep in an Ice detention facility God knows where tonight,” he said. “He has been stripped of his due process rights in a country that is supposed to be founded on equal justice under law.”

A day after the ordeal, Lander said he had no updates on Edgardo, a Spanish-speaking immigrant whom Lander had met just before they were both detained. Lander had been accompanying Edgardo as part of an organized effort to shield immigrants from agents who have been increasingly stalking them for arrest when they appear for their regularly scheduled court hearings. On Tuesday, the group watching proceedings at the court included four rabbis, in addition to Lander, his wife Meg Barnette, and other advocates.

He’s been showing up, he says, because people in the immigration court system are otherwise unprotected. “This is one of the rights violations of this system,” he said. “All these people in it with no lawyers and really no one, no advocates, no one looking out for them.”

Brad Lander: ‘I intend to continue to pursue that hopeful politics.’ Photograph: Maria Spann/The Guardian

With early voting well under way and election day less than a week away, the New York City mayoral race is heating up – and Wednesday’s arrest has significantly raised the visibility of Lander, a well-respected, long-time New York politician who has nonetheless struggled to gain recognition in what is largely a race between Cuomo and leftist Zohran Mamdani. (Mamdani rushed to the courthouse on Wednesday as soon as news of Lander’s arrest broke.) Lander, who like Mamdani is pitching a progressive vision for a more affordable city, is also running on his years-long experience with city government and his bridge-building skills.

Lander is the third Democratic politician recently detained by Department of Homeland Security officials in connection with Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. In this distinction, he joins the California senator Alex Padilla, recently handcuffed and forcibly removed from a DHS press conference, and Newark mayor Ras Baraka, who was arrested while protesting outside an immigration detention center in New Jersey last month.

Lander sees in the targeting of outspoken Democratic politicians the fulfillment of the Trump administration’s promise to “liberate” cities such as Los Angeles and New York. He said it was “strange” to find himself a casualty of the administration’s crackdown.

“But unfortunately not that strange, as Trump has named New York City on the list of places where they are planning to both ratchet up immigration enforcement and put pressure on elected officials.”

In recent weeks Ice agents have been ordered to ramp up arrests, even without warrants. In a video of Lander’s arrest, he is heard asking Ice agents multiple times for a warrant – which they do not produce – before telling them, as they place him in handcuffs, that they “don’t have the authority to arrest US citizens asking for a judicial warrant”.

The Ice agents who arrested him knew he was an elected official, Lander said. He tried to learn more about them while he was detained. “I asked a few questions just to understand who they were,” he said. They were also immigrants – one a Pakistani Muslim resident of Brooklyn, the other an Indo-Guyanese man from Queens. “I asked about their shifts. I hear that Ice agents are working a lot of hours right now,” he said.

“Brad’s arrest was shocking – not in the violence, not in the lawlessness, because we’ve seen this directed at immigrants and citizens profiled as immigrants – but in the decision from Ice to inflict that violence on a sitting elected citywide official,” said Sophie Ellman-Golan, an organizer with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, of which Lander has been a member for decades. Along with JFREJ, he has been working with Immigrant Act, another advocacy group, in shifts to accompany immigrants to court hearings.

Lander has gained some momentum after challenging Cuomo during a recent mayoral debate and cross-endorsing fellow progressive Mamdani. But he consistently polled in third place in the race, well behind the other two.

Brad Lander talks to his supporters after being released from Ice detention. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Lander called out the current mayor – Eric Adams, who offered little sympathy – of having “sold out our city” through corruption.

He said Cuomo “made no effort whatsoever to reach out to most New Yorkers” and that he and Mamdani cross-endorsed one another “because we fundamentally agree that Andrew Cuomo is utterly unfit to be mayor of this city”. He cited Cuomo’s hesitation when he was asked in a recent debate whether he had visited a mosque. “He has nothing to say to Muslim New Yorkers,” said Lander. “He is an abusive bully who doesn’t even love New York City and is just in it for himself.”

While some of his supporters criticised him over the Mamdani endorsement – largely due to Mamdani’s openly pro-Palestinian views – Lander said that here was “an enormous outpouring of goodwill for it”.

“It really did prompt a sense of, ‘Oh, politics could be not just about individuals looking out for themselves, but trying to build something broader that would build a more aspirational vision for the city, and help people come together around it.”

“Obviously, I am putting my case out for why I will be the best mayor of New York City,” he said, citing recent endorsements as a sign his campaign is surging. But, he added, he also hoped to promote a politics “that’s trying to bring people together across divides, and in this case, having one Jewish New Yorker and one Muslim New Yorker cross-endorse in that way offers a hopeful project”.

“Whoever wins, I intend to continue to pursue that hopeful politics.”