Brooklyn lawmakers among more than a dozen pols arrested in ICE protest at Federal Plaza

Several Brooklyn lawmakers — including state Sens. Julia Salazar and Jabari Brisport, Assembly members Robert Carroll, Phara Souffrant Forrest, Emily Gallagher, Marcela Mitaynes, and City Council Member Sandy Nurse — were among more than a dozen city and state officials arrested Thursday during protests against federal immigration enforcement at Manhattan’s Federal Plaza.

They were joined by City Comptroller Brad Lander, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, state Sen. Gustavo Rivera of the Bronx, Assembly Members Jessica González-Rojas, Clare Valdez, and Steven Raga of Queens, and Tony Simone of Manhattan, as well as City Council Member Tiffany Cabán of Queens.

Eleven of the pols, including Lander, were arrested by Department of Homeland Security agents. They were sitting in a hallway with a banner reading “NYers Against ICE” on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, which houses a DHS lockup for undocumented immigrants the agency has detained after their mandatory court hearings elsewhere in the building.

After demanding access to the holding cells and being forcefully denied entry by DHS agents for about 20 minutes, the officials unfurled the banner refused to move from the hallway for roughly another 40 minutes, before getting cuffed. Specifically, the electeds were attempting to inspect if the feds were complying with a preliminary injunction ordering the them to address overcrowding, unsanitary, and inhumane conditions inside the areas.

“Immigration courts should be places of justice, but in reality, have become abduction traps,” Lander said in a statement. “Each week, I witness ICE agents become brownshirts, conducting more abductions and becoming increasingly violent as they detain our immigrant neighbors in deplorable conditions or ship them to far away places.”

“We attempted to conduct oversight of the 10th floor to ensure compliance with this preliminary injunction ruling,” González-Rojas said in a statement. “We put our bodies on the line for the lives and freedom of thousands of New Yorkers who have been illegally kidnapped and detained by ICE. Many of us, myself included, were arrested.”

Another group of elected officials and activists were arrested by NYPD officers outside the facility for attempting to block its driveway. That group included Cabán, Nurse, Souffant Forrest and Williams.

In a statement released by his office, the public advocate said that he and his colleagues had acted “in a nonviolent civil disobedience to demand oversight of ICE’s inhumane detention practices.”

“Even under this creeping authoritarianism regime, I expect to be released today to go home to my family, but the people we’re fighting for don’t have that privilege, as ICE disappears, and deports them,” Williams said. “Together with the dozens of New Yorkers getting arrested today, I call for all levels of government to do what they can to support our immigrant communities and vulnerable, marginalized populations.”

It is the second time Lander has been arrested at immigration court in Federal Plaza; ICE agents roughly accosted him back in June as he sought to inquire about the case of a detained immigrant.

The incident appeared to mark a major escalation in President Trump’s immigration crackdown in the five boroughs.

It comes after months of Lander and other pols showing up to immigration court to observe migrants being detained after their mandatory hearings. Elected officials have also repeatedly been barred from entering ICE’s makeshift holding cells on the 10th floor of Federal Plaza, as well as other federal lockups, since early June.

As of 5 p.m., elected officials were starting to be released from custody, according to a tweet.

This story is developing. Check back for updates.

A version of this story first appeared on Brooklyn Paper’s sister site amNewYork.