Brad Lander, Running For New York Mayor, Detained By ICE After Stepping In To Help Immigrant

New York mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on Tuesday.

Comptroller Lander was escorting a defendant out of an immigration court when he was arrested and detained by ICE.

He had told AP he was going to “accompany” some immigrants out of the building after spending the morning observing court hearings.

Lander had linked arms with a man ICE was trying to detain, and there was a struggle to break them apart.

Video footage shows Lander being dragged down the hallway by officers, who are trying to separate the pair, as journalists and photographers capture everything on camera.

Lander can repeatedly be heard asking officers if they have a judicial warrant.

“Can I see the warrant? I will let go when you show me the judicial warrant,” he tells officers.

“You’re obstructing,” an officer shouts back at him.

After around 40 seconds, Lander is separated from the immigrant and placed in handcuffs.

“You don’t have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens,” he says. “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,” he repeats.

Lander is led away in handcuffs and taken into custody.

He spent over three hours in custody and was released after supporters, including New York Governor Kathy Hochul and mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, gathered in Federal Plaza.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer,” AP reports.

Lander, upon release, addressed a cheering crowd and said he “certainly did not” assault law enforcement.

“I am happy to report that I am just fine. I lost a button,” Lander said.

Lander told MSNBC after his release that the man he was trying to help, Edgardo, was in detention, had no lawyer, and had been “stripped of status and due process.”

He said in the last three weeks, he had been observing in court and trying to help immigrants who were attending hearings but ending up detained by ICE.

DHS lawyers, he said, are dropping the cases of those who have been checked in at the border and are turning up at court dates.

When this happens, they are eligible for expedited removal, and ICE agents are sitting outside the courtroom, ready to detain them.

“Five of the seven families I’ve walked out with over the past three weeks, we’ve been able to get in the elevator and exit the building and they could go back home to their families,” Lander said.

“All we want is the due process that people are supposed to get,” he added.

In a later post on X, Lander vowed to continue his work at immigration courts.

“Tonight, I'll go home and sleep in my bed. I have a lawyer, I'll get due process,” he wrote.

“But Edgardo, whose arm was ripped from mine by ICE agents, has none of those things.

“That's why I'll keep coming back to court, week after week, to make sure that people's rights are protected.”

Lander is not the only politician in recent months to have come to blows with federal agents over immigration amid President Donald Trump’s massive crackdown.

Just last week, Democratic Senator Alex Padilla was handcuffed and removed from a press conference after attempting to question DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

Noem was speaking in L.A. about the massive anti-ICE protests that broke out in response to extensive ICE raids and Trump’s immigration policies.

Padilla was pushed face forward onto the ground, told to put his hands behind his back, and then handcuffed.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was accused of trespassing and arrested in May for protesting outside a new federal immigration detention center in New Jersey.

Representative LaMonica McIver was charged with assaulting federal officers during the same visit at Delaney Hall immigration detention.

She has described the charges as “purely political” and denies them.