Latest news with #BradLander
The Hill
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
How communities can fight back against ICE's unchecked power
Earlier this month, the House and Senate passed a bill that allocates $170 billion to immigration control and border enforcement, with $29.9 billion approved in additional funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This is the agency that, since January, has been flexing its power by arresting law-abiding immigrants, legal permanent residents, foreigners on temporary visas and even elected officials who are U.S. citizens, like New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) in New Jersey. ICE has proven itself to be a law enforcement agency with the ability to violate civil rights, and U.S. citizens and residents should be worried. Truth be told, ICE has operated with impunity since it was established in 2003. For more than seven years, I have been studying what I call 'enforcement episodes,' their long-lasting impacts and the survival stories of young U.S. citizens in New York who have experienced immigration enforcement targeting their parents, family members, neighbors or friends. Young New Yorkers spoke of early morning ICE visits to their childhood homes, agents letting themselves be confused for local police, a detention system that moved parents across states so that families could not visit and relatives disappearing from their lives. They recounted fears when ICE agents periodically appeared on subways and roadways to intimidate citizens and residents indiscriminately. Until now, ICE's unchecked power has gone publicly unacknowledged, unless you looked closely or had been directly affected. This is likely because most U.S. citizens whose rights have been violated were minors. U.S. citizen children have been forcibly separated from parents but have no standing in immigration courts. Fears and anxieties have undermined U.S. citizen children's well-being, while policymakers have turned the other way. In the past, priority directives that shifted across administrations gave adults a sense that guardrails existed and that those targeted had done something wrong and were criminals. ICE could only feasibly carry out large-scale raids in cooperation with other law enforcement agencies, which many community members trusted. Advocates responded by pushing for humanistic views of immigration and for non-cooperation agreements between local agencies and ICE. They advised immigrants to be law-abiding, seek legal counsel and attend appointments and hearings as directed. Meanwhile, the toll enforcement has taken on children has been barely noticed. Today, with an unprecedented expansion of ICE arrests in nearly every state and a three-fold increase to the current budget looming, the advocacy playbook has changed. This makes New Yorkers' survival stories more instructive for moving beyond fear into focused and effective action. Lesson number one: Community members can deescalate enforcement episodes and their aftermath. Those I met suffered most when they directly witnessed episodes such as being present when ICE arrived at their homes or during a traffic stop, or by being drawn into legal proceedings. Episodes are especially traumatic when children translate for parents, attend lawyer's appointments or write letters for waivers of removal. Some of those I met, though, had exceptional support that shielded them. People showed up at traffic stops, offering rides or helping to resolve situations to avoid ICE involvement. This was most common in rural areas with intentionally developed local coalitions between citizens and non-citizens. People also translated for and accompanied family members, in lieu of children. Lesson number two: Community members can offer resources to rebuild. The New Yorkers I met who were most resilient, over time, received aid directly, not through parents. Several, especially in New York City, attended exceptional schools with teachers who simultaneously normalized migration experiences and identified children of immigrants needing interventions. Teachers 'who noticed' — as one young woman described it — connected them to services and mental health counseling. Other young adults participated in clubs or youth groups that provided them with tools to feel empowered, not bewildered, by ICE actions. Because training came before things got personal, these youth launched into action when bad things happened to their families and friends. For 22 years, the U.S. has charged ICE with interior enforcement, with agents now willing to arrest anyone perceived to get in the way. Facing this new expansion of ICE funding and actions, we all have the responsibility to resist and rebuild. To do so we need to: Show up when ICE does, documenting and deescalating when possible. Show up for those in proceedings, ensuring they are not alone. Show up for families, offering mutual aid. Show up for people working with children — teachers, counselors, coaches, doctors and more — training them as first responders to leverage services to children. Show up for children, organizing webs of support through clubs or other activities that they can activate for advocacy efforts. Show up for communities, providing rights training and rejecting silencing about immigration that furthers criminalizing narratives. Around the country, people are taking many of these actions right now. Each of us cannot do everything. But we can show up for each other to heal and to protect the civil rights we all deserve.
Fox News
6 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Dem governor criticizes Mamdani for not condemning 'blatantly antisemitic' rhetoric
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, slammed Democratic socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani for not condemning "blatantly antisemitic" rhetoric while campaigning to lead New York City. "I'll say this about Mamdani or any other leader," Shapiro reportedly said in an interview with Jewish Insider. "If you want to lead New York, you want to lead Pennsylvania, you want to lead the United States of America, you're a leader." "I don't care if you're a Republican or Democratic leader or a democratic socialist leader," the governor reportedly added. "You have to speak and act with moral clarity, and when supporters of yours say things that are blatantly antisemitic, you can't leave room for that to just sit there. You've got to condemn that." "He seemed to run a campaign that excited New Yorkers," Shapiro, a possible 2028 presidential candidate, said of Mamdani's economic proposals. "He also seemed to run a campaign where he left open far too much space for extremists to either use his words or for him to not condemn the words of extremists that said some blatantly antisemitic things." Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani's campaign for comment but did not immediately hear back. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who endorsed Mamdani after losing to him in the June Democratic primary, came to his defense. "Let's be clear: Zohran Mamdani won the votes of a large majority of NYC Democrats, including thousands of proud Jews like me, inspired by his vision of a city everyone can afford and confident about his commitment to combating antisemitism and hate," Lander said in a statement, according to Politico. "Josh Shapiro won't help keep Jews safe in NYC or Pennsylvania by feeding Trump's narrative about our Democratic nominee for mayor." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeen Jeffries, both New York Democrats, have so far withheld endorsements of Mamdani, expressing concern over the mayoral hopeful's comments on Israel. Mamdani drew backlash for refusing to condemn the slogan "globalize the intifada." He has since backtracked while courting New York City business leaders, saying he would no longer use the phrase and would discourage his supporters from using it. Meanwhile, New York City college campuses, including Columbia University, have faced rising antisemitism and anti-Israel protests and encampments in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas terrorists in Israel. Mamdani has defended BDS, or Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, saying at a May town hall that the anti-Israel movement "is consistent with my core of my politics, which is nonviolence." New York has been pivotal to controlling the House majority over the past three elections. Democrats in battleground districts especially have attempted to distance themselves from Mamdani. That includes Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., who said Mamdani's primary win should be a "loud wake-up call for the Democratic Party." Rep. Laura Gillen, another Democrat from a Long Island swing district, said that Mamdani, a socialist, "is too extreme to lead New York City," accusing the mayoral hopeful of promoting "a deeply disturbing pattern of unacceptable antisemitic comments." Punchbowl News reported last month that some New York Democratic members of Congress "literally ran away" from reporters asking about Mamdani's candidacy. Meanwhile, progressives, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have embraced Mamdani, now considered the front-runner ahead of the November general election. Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear – another two possible 2028 presidential contenders – have praised Mamdani's primary victory as a lesson for Democrats. While Mamdani's campaign attempted to appeal to working-class voters by stressing economic injustice and housing affordability, he is the Ugandan-born son of an acclaimed Indian filmmaker and a Columbia University professor. His proposals also echo socialist and communist principles, including government-run grocery stores, rent freezes and abolishing prisons. Mamdani defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo by more than 12 percentage points last month, securing the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City. Mamdani still faces Cuomo, who formally declared his independent mayoral bid earlier this month. Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams is also running as an independent, as is former federal prosecutor Jim Walden. "Guardian Angels" founder Curtis Sliwa is the Republican mayoral candidate. At a Jewish heritage night in early July, Adams encouraged Jewish New Yorkers not to flee the city and slammed Mamdani for saying that he would look into increasing taxes in wealthier and "whiter" neighborhoods. "You have the right to be in this city and anywhere in this country," Adams said, according to the Times of Israel. "Don't live in fear, don't live in anxiety. This city belongs to you as it belongs to every group that lives in this city."
Time Out
21-07-2025
- Business
- Time Out
Office-to-apartment conversions could mean 17,000 new housing units in NYC, says new report
New York City's newest real estate trend isn't a shiny glass tower—it's rethinking the ones we already have. According to a new report from City Comptroller Brad Lander, more than 15 million square feet of aging office space across the city could be flipped into nearly 17,400 apartments, marking a pivotal shift in New York's fight against the housing crisis. That's right: The old Pfizer headquarters? Becoming 1,500 apartments. Downtown's former JPMorgan Chase HQ at 25 Water Street? Already mid-conversion into 1,300 units. Even the onetime home of Goldman Sachs, at 55 Broad Street, has traded its trading desks for 571 new rental units. In total, the report counts 44 conversion projects either completed, underway, or proposed that have gained momentum since the pandemic upended both where New Yorkers live and where they work. With hybrid and remote work emptying out Midtown cubicles and dragging down office values, developers are seizing the opportunity to turn ghosts of commerce past into badly needed homes. A generous new tax break called 467-m is greasing the wheels of the project. Enacted in 2024, it gives developers up to 90-percent off their property tax bill for up to 35 years, as long as 25-percent of the new apartments are affordable. Critics argue that the program is overly generous in some cases: the Comptroller estimates it could cost the city $5.1 billion in lost tax revenue over the next few decades. Most of that cost is tied to Lower Manhattan buildings that might've been converted anyway, tax break or not. Still, the upside is real. Conversions could soak up one-third of the city's pandemic-era office vacancy losses and kickstart vibrant, mixed-use neighborhoods in places once dominated by 9-to-5 crowds. And the pipeline's only growing. Since May, developers have unveiled major new projects, including a plan to convert 5 Times Square into 1,250 apartments and a 72-story skyscraper in Downtown Brooklyn that would replace a much-maligned Verizon call center with 1,263 mixed-income homes.
Japan Times
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Japan Times
'A trap' — Asylum seekers arrested after attending U.S. court hearings
In gloomy corridors outside a Manhattan courtroom, masked agents target and arrest migrants attending mandatory hearings — part of U.S. President Donald Trump's escalating immigration crackdown. Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to deport many migrants, has encouraged authorities to be more aggressive as he seeks to hit his widely reported target of 1 million deportations annually. Since Trump's return to the White House, Homeland Security agents have adopted the tactic of waiting outside immigration courts nationwide and arresting migrants as they leave at the end of asylum hearings. Missing an immigration court hearing is a crime in some cases and can itself make migrants liable to be deported, leaving many with little choice but to attend and face arrest. Armed agents with shields from different federal agencies loitered outside the court hearings in a tower block in central New York, holding paperwork with photographs of migrants to be targeted, an AFP correspondent saw this week. The agents arrested almost a dozen migrants from different countries in just a few hours on the 12th floor of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building. Brad Lander, a city official who was briefly detained last month by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as he attempted to accompany a migrant targeted for removal, called the hearings "a trap." "It has the trappings of a judicial hearing, but it's just a trap to have made them come in the first place," he said Wednesday outside the building. Federal immigration officers take the elevator at U.S. immigration court in Manhattan, in New York City, on Thursday. | REUTERS Lander recounted several asylum seekers being arrested by immigration officers including Carlos, a Paraguayan man who Lander said had an application pending for asylum under the Convention Against Torture — as well as a future court date. "The judge carefully instructed him on how to prepare to bring his case to provide additional information about his interactions with the Paraguayan police and make his case under the global convention against torture for why he is entitled to asylum," Lander said. After his hearing, agents "without any identifying information or badges or warrants grabbed Carlos and then quickly moved him toward the back stairwell," he said. Lander, a Democrat, said the agents were threatening and that they pushed to the ground Carlos' sister, who had accompanied him to the hearing. The White House said recently that "the brave men and women of ICE are under siege by deranged Democrats — but undeterred in their mission." "Every day, these heroes put their own lives on the line to get the worst of the worst ... off our streets and out of our neighborhoods." Back at the building in lower Manhattan, Lander said that "anyone who comes down here to observe could see ... the rule of law is being eroded."
France 24
18-07-2025
- Politics
- France 24
'A trap' - Asylum seekers arrested after attending US courts
Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to deport many migrants, has encouraged authorities to be more aggressive as he seeks to hit his widely-reported target of one million deportations annually. Since Trump's return to the White House, Homeland Security agents have adopted the tactic of waiting outside immigration courts nationwide and arresting migrants as they leave at the end of asylum hearings. Missing an immigration court hearing is a crime in some cases and can itself make migrants liable to be deported, leaving many with little choice but to attend and face arrest. Armed agents with shields from different federal agencies loitered outside the court hearings in a tower block in central New York, holding paperwork with photographs of migrants to be targeted, an AFP correspondent saw this week. The agents arrested almost a dozen migrants from different countries in just a few hours on the 12th floor of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building. Brad Lander, a city official who was briefly detained last month by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents as he attempted to accompany a migrant targeted for removal, called the hearings "a trap." "It has the trappings of a judicial hearing, but it's just a trap to have made them come in the first place," he said Wednesday outside the building. White House defends agents Lander recounted several asylum seekers being arrested by immigration officers including Carlos, a Paraguayan man who Lander said had an application pending for asylum under the Convention Against Torture -- as well as a future court date. "The judge carefully instructed him on how to prepare to bring his case to provide additional information about his interactions with the Paraguayan police and make his case under the global convention against torture for why he is entitled to asylum," Lander said. After his hearing, agents "without any identifying information or badges or warrants grabbed Carlos, and then quickly moved him toward the back stairwell," he said. Lander, a Democrat, claimed the agents were threatening and that they pushed to the ground Carlos's sister who had accompanied him to the hearing. The White House said recently that "the brave men and women of ICE are under siege by deranged Democrats -- but undeterred in their mission." "Every day, these heroes put their own lives on the line to get the worst of the worst... off our streets and out of our neighborhoods." Back at the building in lower Manhattan, Lander said that "anyone who comes down here to observe could see... the rule of law is being eroded."
