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      New York City mayoral candidate Brad Lander arrested at immigration court

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      Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller and a mayoral candidate, was arrested on Tuesday by masked federal agents while visiting an immigration court and accompanying a person out of a courtroom.In a statement to the Guardian, assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin from the Department of Homeland Security said Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer”.Upon his release, Lander said he “certainly did not” assault an officer.Lander appeared at 26 Federal Plaza to observe immigration hearings involving individuals marked for potential deportation.He told an Associated Press reporter that he was there to “accompany” some immigrants out of the building. Tuesday’s trip to an immigration court was Lander’s third over the last month.He was arrested, according to video footage of the incident, as he and his staff walked with an immigrant – who Lander later identified as “Edgardo” – who had their case dismissed pending appeal earlier in the day, per AMNY.Lander can be seen and heard in videos of the incident asking the immigration officials if they have a judicial warrant. Additional footage of the arrest shows Lander telling the officials: “I’m not obstructing. I’m standing right here in the hallway. I asked to see the judicial warrant.Lander appears to be holding on to Edgardo’s shoulder as the officials move him towards an elevator.“I will let go when you show me the judicial warrant,” says Lander. The officials, two of whom were wearing masks, then pinned Lander to a wall and put him in handcuffs.“You don’t have the authority to arrest US citizens asking for a judicial warrant,” Lander can be heard saying.Immigration lawyers told the New York Times that officials do not need judicial warrants to make arrests in immigration courts because they are public spaces.Lander’s wife posted an update on her husband’s Twitter/X account less than an hour after the incident.“Hi, this is Meg Barnette, Brad’s wife,” she wrote, adding: “While escorting a defendant out of immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza, Brad was taken by masked agents and detained by ICE. This is still developing, and our team is monitoring the situation closely.”In a news conference after the arrest, Barnette said she was “extraordinarily proud” of her husband and called the ordeal “shocking and unacceptable”.Masked agents from several federal agencies were seen lining the halls of 26 Federal Plaza on Tuesday morning, including Ice, Enforcement and Removal Operations, the FBI and the treasury department, according to reporters on the scene from the City.Video and news of the arrest made the rounds on social media.Zohran Mamdani, a mayoral candidate who also cross-endorsed Lander, called out the arrest on X: “This is fascism and all New Yorkers must speak in one voice. Release him now.”Julia Salazar, a New York state senator, called the arrest “more evidence that Ice agents are flagrantly breaking the law”.“[Lander] knows his rights, and he was speaking up for the rights of others. Ice agents responded by unlawfully arresting him and refusing to answer basic questions,” she said.Andrew Cuomo, former New York governor and Lander’s mayoral opponent, wrote on X that the arrest is “the latest example of the extreme thuggery of Trump’s ICE out of control – one can only imagine the fear families across our country feel when confronted with ICE. Fear of separation, fear of being taken from their schools, fear of being detained without just cause. This is not who we are. This must stop, and it must stop now.”Mamdani also appeared at the aforementioned pop-up press conference that Barnette spoke at, telling the crowd: “We have to be clear that, in [Lander’s] ask and in their response, we saw that Icehas no interest in the law, it has no interest in order.“[Ice] only has an interest in terrorizing people across this country. In this exact moment, New Yorkers and Americans are looking to leaders to meet this moment, to showcase the courage that is necessary,” he said, before adding:“This is not about an election. This is about ensuring that we protect the city and the country that we love. This is about ensuring that immigrant New Yorkers who come here for regular check-ins do not need to fear being separated from their families in the most brutal and cruel ways imaginable. We know that today’s arrest is but one example of what Ice is doing every single day across this country.”A demonstration broke out outside 26 Federal Plaza on Tuesday afternoon, with a crowd of supporters shouting “free Brad Lander”.Protesters held up placards saying “fascist minion” and “immigrants are New York” while surrounded by a tight cordon of police and metal barricades. Public entry to the building was closed despite it being a public building.New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, called the arrest “bullshit” on social media and to reporters. She later said in a news conference that the charges against Lander had been dropped late on Tuesday afternoon.“To my knowledge, there are no charges. The charges have been dropped. He walked out of there a free man,” she said.Upon his release, Lander said at the same news conference that he was “just fine” and only “lost a button”. He went on to add that this was not the case for Edgardo, the man who’s arrest he was challenging.“Edgardo is in Ice detention and he’s not going to sleep in his bed tonight. So far as I know, he has no lawyer. He has been stripped of his due process rights,” Lander said, later adding: “We are normalizing family separation. We are normalizing due process rights violations. We are normalizing the destruction of constitutional democracy, and we’re not going to stand by and let it happen.”Lander’s arrest comes as federal immigration officials continue to make arrests outside immigration courtrooms across the US. As the Guardian reported on Sunday, between early January, right before the inauguration, and June, there has been an 807% increase in the arrest of immigrants with no criminal record.The arrest also bore similarities to that of Alex Padilla, a Democratic California senator and vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration polices, who was forcibly removed and handcuffed as he attempted to ask a question at a press conference held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, in Los Angeles last week.Much like the criticism of Lander’s arrest, Padilla’s arrest was widely lambasted, with Kamala Harris, the former vice-president, calling the incident “a shameful and stunning abuse of power”.Lander’s arrest was also just one week before the Democratic primary for mayor. His opponents include Cuomo, Mamdani, Adrienne Adams, Scott Stringer, Michael Blake and others. Along with Mamdani, Hochul, Stringer, Blake and Adams showed up to support Lander at the site where he was arrested.Hochul was later seen inside 26 Federal Plaza seeking answers from Ice about the arrest.“How long is this going to take, I don’t think he has a long rap sheet,” she reportedly said to agents.Ed Pilkington contributed reporting More

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      Democrats vying for mayor of New York City clash in second and final debate

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      Seven Democratic candidates vying to become New York City’s next mayor clashed on Thursday night in the second and final debate before the June primary.The two-hour debate quickly turned combative with the frontrunners, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and democratic socialist assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, sparring over their records and qualifications.Cuomo, 67, who is attempting a political comeback after resigning from his role as governor in 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations, dismissed 33-year-old Mamdani as unprepared and too inexperienced for the role of New York City mayor.“I think inexperience is dangerous,” Cuomo said, before running through a list of political institutions that he claimed Mamdani had never dealt with.“He’s never built anything,” Cuomo continued. “He’s never dealt with a natural emergency. He’s never dealt with a hurricane, with a flood, etc. He’s never done any of the essentials. And now you have Donald Trump on top of all of that.”Mamdani fired back: “To Mr Cuomo, I have never had to resign in disgrace, I have never cut Medicaid, I have never stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA, I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment, I have never sued for their gynecological records, and I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr Cuomo.”Mamdani also criticized Cuomo for repeatedly mispronouncing his name: “The name is Mamdani. You should learn how to say it.”Cuomo continued his attacks, calling Mamdani “a man who has done nothing”.Mamdani defended his record as an assemblymember, citing work and organizing he did to help New York City taxi drivers. Mamdani, who said it was “time for a new generation of leadership”, urged New Yorkers to judge him by the campaign he’s running, where he manages 36,000 volunteers.He promised to bring “innovation and competence” to city hall and hire “the best and the brightest”.In addition to Cuomo and Mamdani, five other candidates were on the stage: the city comptroller, Brad Lander; the council speaker, Adrienne Adams; the state senator Zellnor Myrie; the former comptroller Scott Stringer; and the former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson.The debate opened with moderators asking the candidates about the Trump administration’s immigration raids in Los Angeles and the administration’s response to the protests against the immigration crackdown.“If you were mayor of New York right now, how would you handle this situation, if something like that happened here?” the moderators asked.“We are going to protect our immigrants,” Cuomo said. “This is a sanctuary city, and we are going to defend the laws of the sanctuary city.”“Donald Trump only picks fights that he can win. He cannot win a fight with me as mayor of New York,” Cuomo added.Mamdani pledged to block any New York City police department cooperation with federal immigration agents if elected, and vowed to provide and fund legal support for immigrants facing deportation cases.Other candidates, such as Adrienne Adams, said they would sue the federal government.Cuomo faced sustained criticism throughout the night. Lander, the city comptroller, repeatedly challenged Cuomo’s record.Early in the debate, Lander pressed Cuomo on his use of the term “illegal immigrants”, prompting Cuomo to switch to “undocumented”. Throughout the debate, Lander accused Cuomo of failing to take accountability for things that had occurred while he was governor.“I lead by building the best teams, not through sexual harassment, corruption and disgrace,” Lander said.Cuomo was asked about the sexual harassment allegations against him that led to his 2021 resignation. Cuomo called them “political” and urged voters to “look at the facts”.Lander responded by saying that if Cuomo were elected mayor, he would not tell college students to work in city government, and that he would have to tell them: “Don’t go work at city hall because the mayor is a sexual harasser.”Cuomo hit back, saying that Lander was telling lies.On housing, all of the candidates said that they would want to build more housing in New York City. Cuomo and Tilson were the only candidates on the stage who did not support a rent freeze for rent-stabilized units for this year.On public safety, Myrie said the issue called for subway teams made up of both police and mental health experts, and said that he would institute 50,000 more summer youth jobs and after-school programs.Tilson attacked Mamdani, arguing that he had “demonized” the police.In response, Mamdani said that if elected he would “not defund the police” and said that he would “work with the police because I believe the police have a critical role to play in creating public safety”. He also called for mental health and social workers to help the police respond to emergency calls.Moderators pressed Cuomo on why, during “10-plus years as governor”, he had not made a “public visit to a mosque” and asked him what he would say “to more than 760,000 Muslims here in the city about whether or not you would reach out to them, make them feel welcome, make them feel protected?”In response, Cuomo said that he believed he had visited a mosque and added: “I would say, we are a city of immigrants, I welcome them, I love them.”Mamdani was also asked to address concerns from Jewish New Yorkers supportive of Israel who “fear for their safety in this current political climate”.Mamdani responded: “I hear them and that I have heard them over the course of this campaign and before that”, adding: “I will protect Jewish New Yorkers and deliver them that safety.”Mamdani received criticism from Cuomo and Tilson over his criticisms of Israel.Tensions also escalated when Mamdani, who is Muslim, accused Cuomo’s Super Pac of altering a photo on a leaked draft campaign flyer to make his beard look darker, longer and thicker. Mamdani first made the accusation earlier on Thursday on Instagram, calling it “blatant Islamophobia”.Unlike the previous week’s debate, which was held without an audience, Thursday’s event had a live crowd that reacted audibly throughout with clapping, cheering, booing and laughter.The final debate on Thursday came after several major recent endorsements. The New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez threw her support behind Mamdani after last week’s debate, while the former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsed Cuomo this week.New polling released this week underscores just how tight the race has become.The Democratic primary election will be held on 24 June, with early voting beginning 10 days earlier, on 14 June. The election will use ranked-choice voting, allowing New Yorkers to rank up to five candidates in order of preference.The current New York mayor, Eric Adams, who ran as a Democrat in 2021, is seeking re-election as an independent candidate.The general mayoral election is set for 4 November. More

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      New York mayoral candidate accuses Cuomo donors of altering photo in act of ‘blatant Islamophobia’

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      Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist state assemblyman waging a progressive bid to become mayor of New York City, has accused donors to the frontrunner Andrew Cuomo of “blatant Islamophobia” after a mailer from their Super Pac altered Mamdani’s image giving him a darker, bushier beard.Mamdani, 33, posted a closeup of his face as featured in the mailer from the Cuomo-backing group Fix the City alongside the original photograph from which it was drawn. In the transition, the image’s visual contrast appears to be manipulated, slightly lightening Mamdani’s skin but also giving him the appearance of a longer and significantly fuller beard.The mailer, first revealed by a reporter from the Forward, was aimed at Jewish voters. It accuses Mamdani, who is openly critical of Israel’s war in Gaza which he calls a genocide, of refusing to recognize Israel and supporting the boycott movement against the state.A spokesperson for Fix the City, Liz Benjamin, said that the mailer had not been released in the form that Mamdani found objectionable. “The mailer was proposed by a vendor; upon review it was immediately rejected for production and was subsequently corrected.”She added: “We are disturbed that this was posted online without our consent.”Mamdani, who would become the first Muslim mayor of New York should he prevail in the Democratic primary on 24 June and go on to win the general election in November, said the altered image amounted to “blatant Islamophobia”. He added a dig at Cuomo, referring to his big money donors who also back Donald Trump and the president’s Make America great again movement.The image, Mamdani said, was a demonstration of “the kind of racism that explains why Maga billionaires support [Cuomo’s] campaign”.Mamdani also cast the altered image as a sign that Cuomo and his donors were afraid of losing the mayoral race. Recent polls have suggested a tightening contest, with one recent internal poll, disputed by the Cuomo campaign, indicating that Mamdani was edging in front.The New York mayoral race is being followed very closely in political circles, partly because the city is the largest in the US and partly because the clash between Cuomo and Mamdani could be a referendum on the future of the Democratic party. Cuomo, 67, is a consummate machine politician who was elected as governor three times before resigning in 2021 following accusations of sexual harassment which he denies.He has been endorsed by Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of the city.Mamdani, by contrast, is a progressive state lawmaker from Queens who immigrated to the US from Uganda when he was seven. He was elected as a member of the New York state assembly four years ago.A self-identified democratic socialist, he was endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the leading progressive member of Congress. He is running on a platform of making the city affordable to working New Yorkers, through a combination of rent freezes, free childcare and free and faster bus transport. More

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      Trump administration urges other countries to skip UN conference on Israel-Gaza war

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      Donald Trump’s administration is discouraging governments around the world from attending a UN conference next week on a possible two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, according to a US cable seen by Reuters.The diplomatic demarche, sent on Tuesday, says countries that take “anti-Israel actions” following the conference will be viewed as acting in opposition to US foreign policy interests and could face diplomatic consequences from Washington.The demarche runs squarely against the diplomacy of two close allies, France and Saudi Arabia, who are co-hosting the gathering next week in New York that aims to lay out the parameters for a roadmap to a Palestinian state, while ensuring Israel’s security.“We are urging governments not to participate in the conference, which we view as counterproductive to ongoing, life-saving efforts to end the war in Gaza and free hostages,” read the cable.Emmanuel Macron has suggested France could recognise a Palestinian state in Israeli-occupied territories at the conference. French officials say they have been working to avoid a clash with the US, Israel’s staunchest major ally.“The United States opposes any steps that would unilaterally recognise a conjectural Palestinian state, which adds significant legal and political obstacles to the eventual resolution of the conflict and could coerce Israel during a war, thereby supporting its enemies,” the cable read.The United States for decades backed a two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians that would create a state for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza alongside Israel.Trump, in his first term, was relatively tepid in his approach to a two-state solution, a longtime pillar of US Middle East policy. The Republican president has given little sign of where he stands on the issue in his second term.But on Tuesday, the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a long-time vocal supporter of Israel, said he did not think an independent Palestinian state remained a US foreign policy goal.“Unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state would effectively render Oct 7 Palestinian Independence Day,” the cable read, referring to when Palestinian Hamas militants carried out a cross-border attack from Gaza on Israel in 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages.Hamas’ attack triggered Israel’s air and ground war in Gaza in which almost 55,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of the population of 2.3 million displaced and the enclave widely reduced to rubble.If Macron went ahead, France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities, would become the first Western heavyweight to recognise a Palestinian state.This could lend greater momentum to a movement hitherto dominated by smaller nations generally more critical of Israel.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMacron’s stance has shifted amid Israel’s intensified Gaza offensive and escalating violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, and there is a growing sense of urgency in Paris to act now before the idea of a two-state solution vanishes forever.The US cable said Washington had worked tirelessly with Egypt and Qatar to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, free the hostages and end the conflict.“This conference undermines these delicate negotiations and emboldens Hamas at a time when the terrorist group has rejected proposals by the negotiators that Israel has accepted.”This week the UK, Australia and Canada were joined by other countries in placing sanctions on two Israeli far-right government ministers to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, to bring the Gaza war to an end.“The United States opposes the implied support of the conference for potential actions including boycotts and sanctions on Israel as well as other punitive measures,” the cable read.Israel has repeatedly criticised the conference, saying it rewards Hamas for the attack on Israel, and it has lobbied France against recognising a Palestinian state.“Nothing surprises me anymore, but I don’t see how many countries could step back on their participation,” said a European diplomat, who asked for anonymity due to the subject’s sensitivity. “This is bullying, and of a stupid type.“ More

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      Protests across US as anger grows over Trump’s immigration crackdown

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      Protests against the Trump administration’s newly intensified immigration raids, centered on Los Angeles, spread across the country on Tuesday, with demonstrations in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Omaha and Seattle.Thousands attended a protest against the federal government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in New York City’s Foley Square.Some protesters held signs reading “Ice out of New York” and others chanted “Why are you in riot gear? I don’t see no riot here.”Shirley, a 29-year-old protester, condemned the Trump administration for targeting workers, which she called antithetical to the country’s essence.“I come from immigrant parents,” she said, with a large Mexican flag draped across her back. “It’s infuriating to see that this particular government is going into labor fields, taking people from construction sites, into industry, plants, into farms, and taking away what is the backbone of this country.“So I’m here today to remind everybody that the United States started as an immigrant country, and it’s a nation of immigrants, and I just want to make sure that I’m here for those who can’t be here today.”Councilmember Shahana Hanif of Brooklyn spoke before the large crowd in Foley Square. She criticized the Trump administration and New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, for the crackdown on immigrants.“Mayor Adams has made it clear that he doesn’t care about working class people,” she said. “He does not care about any one of us. He is collaborating with Trump to use tactics. He’s complicit.”She also expressed her desire to keep New York a sanctuary city, and called for more protections for international students.“Stop the attacks and assaults on our students!” she yelled, and was met with cheers from the crowd.Thousands also gathered outside an immigration court in Chicago, and then marched through downtown streets, drumming and chanting, “No more deportations!”View image in fullscreenAt one point, a car drove through the marchers, narrowly missing the anti-Ice protesters, according to WGN TV News, which broadcast video of the incident.In metro Atlanta, hundreds of people marched along Buford Highway in solidarity with Los Angeles, local 11 Alive News reported.Protesters marched in Omaha on Tuesday, chanting “Chinga la migra” (a Spanish phrase that roughly translates to the slogan “Fuck Ice” on placards waved by the marchers) after about 80 people were reportedly arrested in an immigration raid on a meat-packing plant.In Seattle, a small crowd of about 50 protesters gathered outside the Henry M Jackson federal building in downtown Seattle to show solidarity with protesters in Los Angeles, the Seattle Times reported.After a rally, the protesters barricaded driveways with e-bikes and e-scooters to block homeland security vehicles thought to be transporting detained immigrants.Large rallies also took place in Dallas and Austin on Monday, and up to 1,800 protests are planned nationwide on Saturday, to coincide with the military parade Donald Trump is throwing on his birthday in the nation’s capital. More

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      ‘I’m paranoid all the time’: surveillance and fear in a city of immigrants as White House ramps up deportations

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      Two months after fleeing death threats in Colombia, Juan landed a construction job in New York. But on his first day, the bulky GPS monitor strapped to his ankle caught the manager’s attention. It wouldn’t fit inside standard work boots. The boss shook his head. “Come back when you’ve resolved your status,” he said.Since arriving in the US with his teenage daughter to seek asylum, Juan has lived in a state of constant anxiety. “It feels like I committed a crime, like they’re going to arrest me at any moment,” he said, speaking near the migrant shelter where they now live in Queens. Juan started wearing oversized pants to hide the monitor, a style he finds uncomfortable. “I’m paranoid all the time,” he said.Genesis, a 25-year-old from Panama, lives in the same shelter as Juan with her two-year-old. She has worn an ankle monitor for more than 18 months. “When I go to the park with my son, other parents don’t want their kids to play with him,” she said. The stigma of the monitor, she added, makes her feel like a bad mother. Genesis fled after members of Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal group from Venezuela, threatened her life there, she said.Juan and Genesis are among the more than 12,000 immigrants in New York enrolled in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) schemes called Alternatives to Detention (ATD) and the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP).View image in fullscreenMost of them are asylum seekers from Central or South America who came to the city seeking safety and the chance to work, according to a recent report from the American Bar Association, a national group of lawyers. They don’t have any criminal convictions, yet without legal status, they live under constant surveillance as their cases wend their way through the badly backed-up US immigration court system.Under ATD-ISAP, people can be monitored through GPS ankle bracelets, wrist-worn trackers, telephone check-ins or a mobile app called SmartLINK.The number of undocumented people under electronic monitoring related to their lack of immigration status alone is believed to have more than doubled since 2021, when the number in the US was about 85,000, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (Trac) at Syracuse University, although the organization “advises the public to be extremely cautious” about data on this from Ice.Ice’s internal budget for ATD-ISAP has increased from $28m in 2006 to nearly $470m by the end of 2024.While attention in the second Trump administration has been on detention and deportation, electronic monitoring is still a significant factor in many immigrants’ lives and has been increasingly so in recent years.Ice promotes ATD-ISAP as a “humane and cost-effective” alternative to detention, but while it is certainly better than being locked up, lawyers and advocates argue it embeds unnecessary state control into homes, workplaces and public spaces, trapping people in cycles of fear, stigma and instability.View image in fullscreenThose assigned body-worn monitors often report skin irritation, discomfort and the need for frequent charging. When the battery runs low, the device emits a loud alert that draws unwanted attention. “People made comments while I was working at McDonald’s. I’m not a criminal,” Genesis said. Even routine activities like showering can trigger connectivity issues, leading to phone calls from ISAP officers or sudden demands for in-person check-ins.SmartLINK, by contrast, requires participants to submit geotagged selfies, typically once a week, rather than being tracked continuously throughout the day.ATD-ISAP is managed by BI Incorporated, a subsidiary of the private prison giant Geo Group. In 2020, Donald Trump’s first administration awarded the company a five-year, $2.2bn contract.Regardless of the type of surveillance assigned, participants remain under acute risk of arrest and deportation. Some have started the asylum application process; others came relatively recently from Texas when that state was bussing asylum seekers to Democratic-led cities, and so far are merely trying to find their footing, perhaps a lawyer and some advice about starting the process to get papers and a work permit.View image in fullscreenThey are expected to report in person to the ISAP office with little notice. The office is located in a basement near Ice’s 26 Federal Plaza headquarters in lower Manhattan. Appointments are usually scheduled during working hours, forcing many to miss work, arrange childcare or lose out on daily wages, all while being in terror of arrest and summary detention.On weekday mornings, people can be seen lining up outside the building while anxious loved ones wait nearby. “It’s very difficult to have a normal life,” said a man from Guatemala whose wife has been monitored for three years. He asked to remain anonymous. “We can’t even leave the city,” he added.Some people enrolled in the ADP program were arrested amid record enforcement earlier this week, NBC reported, in a national ramping-up of efforts on the orders of senior Trump administration officials, including in New York.The effects of surveillance aren’t limited to those being tracked. Entire neighborhoods are feeling its presence.Liliana Torres, a psychologist who offers weekly mental health support in Spanish to newly arrived immigrants, said that cameras, patrol cars and even the sound of sirens regularly spark panic among her clients. “Everyday elements of the city become triggers,” she said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis fear is especially felt in areas of the city such as Corona, home to New York’s largest Latin American immigrant community. Local business owners reported a noticeable drop in customers the first few months of the Trump administration.View image in fullscreen“People think they’re going to take all of us,” said a nail salon worker who asked to remain anonymous due to concerns around her legal status. “But we can’t afford to stay home. We have to work.”Vendors at Corona Plaza say police presence has increased in recent months, especially since the launch of Operation Roosevelt last fall, a citywide crackdown on unlicensed vending and sex work. The measures disproportionately affected undocumented residents. Neighbors and advocates worry the heightened enforcement signals deeper coordination between the New York police department and federal immigration authorities.“There’s a noticeable uptick in the use of digital surveillance tools, including social media monitoring and data-sharing with local agencies,” said Veronica Cardenas, an immigration attorney who left her role as an Ice prosecutor in 2023 after witnessing first-hand the treatment immigrants receive. “More people who would have previously been considered low priority are now at risk.”View image in fullscreenFear spreads online, too. “We see people on TikTok saying Ice is coming when it isn’t,” said Niurka Meléndez, founder of Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid (VIA), a volunteer-run group that connects asylum seekers to legal and social services. “Or worse, spreading confusion about immigration law.”VIA has been leading a regular event called Miracle Mondays at the St Paul & St Andrew United Methodist church in Manhattan since 2022. Once considered sanctuary spaces, churches are no longer off limits to Ice, prompting VIA to take extra precautions. Event locations are now shared privately via WhatsApp, rather than being posted publicly on social media.In response to growing fears, the Venezuelan-led group has also started organizing legal clinics in neighborhoods such as Corona to reach those too afraid to attend the church. At one such event in March, dozens of Latin American migrants gathered to ask lawyers from the New York Legal Assistance Group how they could regularize their immigration status.“If I give birth here and they deport me, will they keep my baby?” asked Stefani, a Venezuelan woman eight months pregnant. One lawyer responded cautiously, explaining that while she would have the right to bring her baby with her, the government can still act in ways that disregard the law. Lawyers also handed out one-page notices saying that individuals with pending asylum cases cannot be detained without due process.View image in fullscreenLocal community groups such as Ice Watch have adapted to this new climate by educating communities about their rights. Ice Watch tracks immigration enforcement and sends real-time alerts via encrypted Signal chats across the five boroughs. Its members also conduct training to teach people how to recognize Ice agents, document encounters and support those being targeted. Social workers, English teachers activists and small business owners are often among those who attend.For Juan, who fled Colombia after gang members shot his father in the head, life in New York has come at the cost of constant paranoia and a sense that genuine safety remains out of reach. His 16-year-old daughter notices everything. “She sees how I live and blames herself,” he said. At times, they’ve talked about returning to Colombia, but the risk of being kidnapped and tortured by mobsters is very real for him and his family.“I fear something worse than death could happen if I go back,” Juan said.Despite the stress, he holds on to small signs of progress, such as watching his daughter attend school and slowly but steadily pick up English. “I need to give her at least the option to have a better life than I had,” he said. More

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      Trump officials intensify Columbia dispute with accreditation threat

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      The Department of Education announced on Wednesday afternoon that it has notified Columbia University’s accreditor of an alleged violation of federal anti-discrimination laws by the elite private university in New York that is part of the Ivy League.The alleged violation means that Columbia, in the Trump administration’s assessment, has “failed to meet the standards” set by the relevant regional, government-recognized but independent body responsible for the accreditation of degree-granting institutions, as a kind of educational quality controller.In this case the accreditor is the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. Accreditors determine which institutions are eligible for federal student loans and various federal grants.The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.“Accreditors have an enormous public responsibility as gatekeepers of federal student aid. They determine which institutions are eligible for federal student loans and Pell grants,” the secretary of education, Linda McMahon, said in a statement. Pell grants are awarded as federal financial aid to students with exceptional financial need.A spokesperson for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education declined to provide comment but confirmed that the organization had received a letter from the Department of Education about the matter on Wednesday.While the federal government does not directly accredit US universities, it has a role in overseeing the mostly private organizations that do. Trump has often complained that accreditors approve institutions that fail to provide, in his view, quality education.The notice marks the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s bid to dictate to Columbia after accusing the college of failing to protect students from antisemitic harassment.It follows the cancellation of $400m in federal grants and contracts, after which the university yielded to a series of changes demanded by the administration, including setting up a new disciplinary committee, initiating investigations into students critical of Israel’s war in Gaza, and ceding control of its Middle East studies department.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionColumbia was at the forefront of student encampment protests last spring, with more direct action protests erupting in recent weeks and jeers at leadership at commencement ceremonies last month, and has cycled through a series of university presidents in the past 18 months.The Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services said last month that an investigation found that the university had acted with “deliberate indifference” toward the harassment of Jewish students during campus protests, while Columbia has previously said it would work with the government to address antisemitism, harassment and discrimination.Reuters contributed reporting More