Trump Weaponising Fear

New York mayoral hopeful speaks out after ICE arrest

- Alice Speri

When the New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate, Brad Lander, was hauled away by masked ICE agents on Tuesday, all he could think about was whether there was more he could do for the man he was trying to help: an immigrant New Yorker named Edgardo.

Both men ended up detained, but Lander's ordeal was over after a few hours. By the time New York's governor, Kathy Hochul, had marched him out of the courthouse - after proclaiming, of his arrest: "This is bullshit" - videos and photos of the officers manhandling him had gone viral. The arrest of another elected official prompted widespread condemnation of a further sign of the US's steady slide into authoritarianism. A host of New York politicians, along with a crowd of angry New Yorkers, waited for Lander outside the courthouse in downtown Manhattan. (Andrew Cuomo, the former governor and mayoral race frontrunner, was a notable absence, though he did condemn the arrest.)

Lander said: "I wasn't surprised there were a lot of folks outside angry both about the violations of the rights of immigrants and about Trump's efforts to undermine democracy. The Trump administration has been very clear that they are looking to stoke conflict, weaponize fear and undermine democracy, and here they are doing it," he added.