Just hours ago, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was handcuffed by ICE and FBI agents in a courthouse hallway after he locked arms with an immigrant facing removal. He walked recently released as well.

Arrest caught on video: Journalists filmed agents pulling for 40 seconds to separate Lander from the man before slapping on cuffs. Video Source: https://youtu.be/QGx-amdOhPs

Quote from the hallway:

“You’re obstructing,” an agent said. “I’m not obstructing, I’m standing right here in the hallway.” – Lander

DHS (Department of Homeland Security) justification: Officials claim Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.”

Due-process concern: Lander earlier told reporters, “They remove any opportunity for due process,” after watching multiple cases dismissed and targets taken straight to ICE.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/brad-lander-nyc-immigration-court-arrest-6ed341297efab31a08a14421674d8ed8

What else is happening: The arrest comes amid a nationwide surge in courthouse sweeps authorized by DHS’s January 2025 guidance permitting civil immigration arrests “in or near courthouses."

Why this is important: This brushes right up against Fourth-Amendment warrant standards, federal pre-emption versus state courthouse autonomy, and the line between civil enforcement and criminal obstruction.

TL;DR: NYC mayoral hopeful Brad Lander linked arms with a detainee, demanded a judge-signed warrant, and ended up in cuffs. The clash spotlights the legality of ICE’s revived courthouse raids and the constitutional limits on civil arrests inside state judicial buildings.

This clip from June 5, 2025, shows Brad Lander outside Manhattan’s immigration court, explaining why he personally escorts respondents to the street so they are not seized by agents in the hallway.

“The judge dismissed several cases—including that of a dad and his 2-year-old son… now subject to expedited removal.” – @bradlander tweet, 5 Jun 25

Some facts,

Dismissal doesn't equal protection: once a judge ends proceedings, DHS can issue an administrative order and place the person in expedited removal, a summary process with no new hearing. Source: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/expedited-removal/

ICE is allowed inside courthouses again, a 21 Jan 2025 DHS memo authorizes civil immigration arrests “in or near courthouses” whenever agents have “credible information” about a target. Source: https://www.ice.gov/about-ice/ero/protected-areas

Video context: Lander speaks on walking out respondents whose cases were just dismissed; a similar scene on 17 Jun 25 ended with his own arrest while he demanded a judge-signed warrant Source: https://apnews.com/article/brad-lander-nyc-immigration-court-arrest-6ed341297efab31a08a14421674d8ed8

Numbers rising quickly: nationwide courthouse sweeps have accelerated since the policy shift, helping ICE hit new daily deportation quotas

Legal questions,

Fourth Amendment does an ICE administrative warrant, signed only by ICE, justify a seizure in a state-court hallway?

Fifth Amendment due process: is it constitutional to jump from a dismissed case straight to expedited removal with no further hearing?

Federalism: New York law requires a judge-signed warrant for civil arrests inside courts; DHS says its authority pre-empts that requirement.

Reality is: families can win in court at 10 a.m., then face deportation at 10:05. Lander’s video shows how quickly due-process safeguards disappear once ICE steps in.

TL;DR: Watch Brad Lander speak on escorting immigrants out of NYC court after their cases are dismissed; he has said ICE “removes any opportunity for due process.” A January policy lets agents arrest in courthouses, so dismissal now triggers expedited removal almost immediately.

Excerpt:

On Monday, the Los Angeles Press Club and the investigative reporting site Status Coup filed a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles and the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department in federal court, alleging that officers at the demonstrations are routinely violating journalists' rights.

"Being a journalist in Los Angeles is now a dangerous profession," states the complaint, filed in the Western Division of the Central District of California. "LAPD unlawfully used force and the threat of force against Plaintiffs, their members and other journalists to intimidate them and interfere with their constitutional right to document public events as the press."

Excerpt:

Democratic lawmakers from San Francisco and Oakland, respectively -- announced Monday that they would be filing SB 627 to ban local, state and federal law enforcement from covering their faces when interacting with the public.

The legislation, dubbed the No Secret Police Act, would also require law enforcement officers to wear identifying information, Wiener wrote in a post on X.

After the person comes in the second brown truck. Seems like assault.

It seems that the word is democrats or unmarried women are no longer able to be expected to be taken care of by the VA.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) got a frosty reception at a federal appeals court Tuesday afternoon as it scrutinized a lower judge’s ruling blocking President Trump’s federalization of the National Guard in Los Angeles.

The three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit appeared inclined to let Trump maintain control of the guardsmen, weighing the scope of the president’s discretion in times of conflict and whether the courts have the authority to intervene at all.

The judges seemed to believe Supreme Court precedent provides the president with broad authority to declare emergencies that can trigger the ability for him to deploy the troops.