By Steve Gorman
NEW YORK (Reuters) -About a dozen New York state and local elected officials were arrested on Thursday during protests at a Manhattan building where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents operate holding cells cited by a federal judge for inhumane conditions.
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and 10 state lawmakers were taken into custody inside 26 Federal Plaza after they were denied entry to inspect the 10th-floor cells. A group was there to “ensure compliance” with a court order on Thursday requiring ICE to improve conditions at the lockup, protest organizers said.
The city’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams, led another group of several dozen anti-ICE protesters who blocked the building’s garage entrance, sitting on the pavement with signs and chanting, “Say it loud, say it clear, immigrants are welcome here.”
Organizers said more than 75 people in all were detained by city police and federal agents at both gatherings.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for ICE’s parent agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, put the number of overall arrests at 71.
The incident was the latest clash between federal authorities and Democratic politicians opposed to the immigration policies of President Donald Trump. Lander was detained in June inside the same building, where the government also operates an immigration court, while escorting a man who ICE wanted to arrest.
In May, Representative LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey Democrat, and Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, were arrested during an altercation outside an immigration detention center in Newark.According to McLaughlin’s account of the incident inside the building, Lander showed up “with agitators and media and proceeded to obstruct law enforcement and cause a scene.”
“He yelled inside the building that he was ‘not leaving’ until detainees were ‘released,'” McLaughlin said in a statement. “As a result of the chaos caused by Lander, officers of the New York Police Department and federal law enforcement arrested members of the group.
She said the entire building was placed under a lockdown afterward because “someone called in a bomb threat.”
Organizers said the comptroller, three state senators and seven state assembly members visited the building seeking to “conduct oversight” of conditions at the 10th-floor detention facility a day after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction requiring changes in its operation.
The 84-page court order cited complaints of unsanitary and overcrowded conditions, with up to 90 detainees packed into a 20-square-meter (215 square feet) room and forced to sleep on concrete floors, if they could even find a place to lie down.
It also found detainees were unable to bathe and shower, and lacked basic hygiene supplies such as soap, sanitary napkins, toothbrushes, clean clothing or toilet paper.
“The cruel policy of subjecting individuals to degrading treatment and inhumane conditions is deeply disturbing. And now the court has made it abundantly clear that it is also illegal,” said Harold Solis, co-legal director of Make the Road New York.
McLaughlin said the detainees held at 26 Federal Plaza included immigrants subject to deportation for criminal convictions, including weapons offenses, drug trafficking and one arrested for flying drones near the White House on multiple occasions.
A New York Police Department spokesperson confirmed that multiple arrests were made at 26 Federal Plaza. But neither the police, nor DHS nor protest organizers made any mention of charges being filed.
(Reporting by David Dee Delgado in New York; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in Los Angeles and Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Frank McGurty and Lincoln Feast)
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