ICE Arrests New York City Comptroller Brad Lander

Progressive City Comptroller Brad Lander was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while in a Lower Manhattan immigration court.

So confirmed Dora Pekec, spokeswoman for his New York mayoral campaign, who said he had been "taken by masked agents and detained by ICE." "This is still developing and we are monitoring the situation closely."

The message was also shared on the comptroller's personal account, by someone who identified herself as his wife, Meg Barnette. In a video attached to that same post, Lander can be seen struggling with the agents, preventing them from taking away another man, presumably an immigrant whom his team acknowledged he was "escorting" to the courthouse.

Anonymous sources consulted by The New York Post claimed he had been arrested for obstruction.

The arrest is reminiscent of the episode of blue Senator Alex Padilla, handcuffed by FBI agents after interrupting a speech by Secretary Kristi Noem, as well as the arrest of Democratic Newark Mayor Ras Baraka for having entered a detention center without authorization.

A series of episodes that pro-government voices denounce as a staged event to campaign on immigration. In Lader's case, for mayor: the official account of his campaign, they point out, uploaded the video of his arrest.

Who is Brad Lander?

As comptroller of the City of New York, he is responsible for overseeing the finances and financial health of the city. He took office in 2022, after comfortably winning the local election to the post. He previously served 12 years as a councilman, where he co-founded the Progressive Caucus.

In 2025, he aspires to unseat Mayor Eric Adams, who will run as an independent, as a progressive alternative. First, he will have to stick with a crowded Democratic primary: to date there are eleven challengers, including former Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The New York Times editorial board singled him out as a possible alternative to the front-runners, but warned that he "is another Democrat who adopted dubious ideas, such as cuts to policing, during the party’s leftward shift of the late 2010s and early 2020s."

As comptroller, he boasted on the campaign trail about his audits. Among them is a report on cost overruns in services to immigrants during Adams' tenure.

The challenger and the current mayor exchanged criticism over investigations against Adams, anti-Semitism - both accuse each other of not doing enough - and immigration policy. Among other rebukes, Lander lambasted Adams' trip to the border and demanded in a public letter that he "recuse [himself] from all matters related to the City’s sanctuary laws that have been targeted by the Trump Administration’s latest Executive Order."