Mamdani demands release of New York council employee detained by US agents

Federal immigration agents detained an employee of the New York City Council on Monday, sparking outrage from the city’s leaders and renewed rebukes against the Trump administration’s immigration actions.“This is an assault on our democracy, on our city, and our values,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a statement on X. “I am calling for his immediate release and will continue to monitor the situation.”The employee was taken in during a “routine immigration appointment”, according to statements from Mamdani and council speaker, Julie Menin. The council was made aware he had been detained on Monday afternoon, after the employee called the council’s human resources department for help, ABC News reported.Menin did not name the employee, but said he was legally in the US and had authorization to remain in the country through October 2026. She said the council was working to secure his release, and called the action “overreach”.“Across the nation, we have seen aggressive escalations by ICE that raise serious concerns on the use of excessive force and a lack of accountability,” she said. “As New Yorkers, we will stand up for the rights and dignity of every neighbor.”At a press conference on Monday afternoon, Menin told reporters that the Department of Homeland Security had given no basis for his detainment, and had transferred him to a detention center in Manhattan.Democratic New York congressman Dan Goldman, who also spoke at the briefing, emphasized that the employee was a “law-abiding immigrant with work authorization”, and said he was of Venezuelan descent.“I want to be very clear: there is no indication that there’s anything about this individual other than his immigration status that caused him to be arrested,” Goldman said.The actions are part of a pattern; federal officers targeted immigration appointments across the country last year, in what appeared to be a coordinated operation. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have also been known to haunt mandatory immigration check-ins, a strategy seen by experts as a trap set for those abiding by the laws.“It’s bad policy,” Lindsay Toczylowski, president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) told the Guardian last May when the trend started to appear more broadly. “By putting immigration officers in the courtrooms, they’re discouraging people from following the processes, punishing people for following the rules.”Meanwhile, the Trump administration touted a surge in deployments as it ramps up ICE operations. There are plans in place to escalate the agency’s actions this year, despite the growing protests to the violent and disruptive tactics used by officers to execute the president’s deportation agenda.Thousands of people across the country have filled the streets this week after the shooting of Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good, who was killed by an ICE agent.Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison also announced a lawsuit against the federal government on Monday, hoping to stem the surge of ICE agents flooding into the state.Ellison said: “We allege that [the] DHS’s use of excessive and lethal force, their warrantless, racist arrests, their targeting of our courts, our churches, houses of worship and schools, our violation of the administrative procedures act on arbitrary and capricious federal actions. And we ask that the courts will end the surge of thousands of DHS agents in Minnesota.”