A United States senator forced to the floor and handcuffed by federal agents for interrupting a news conference. A mayor taken into custody by masked officials in military-style fatigues. A political candidate pushed against a wall and handcuffed in a dispute at an immigration courthouse.
With tensions rising over President Trump’s mass deportation policies, the government crackdown is extending to the political opposition.
As Democrats struggle to push back against the administration, federal agents have arrested or clashed with a growing number of the party’s elected officials. The scenes of chaos reflect the tinderbox nature of this political moment, and the expanding national battles over due process, the rule of law and the system of checks and balances.
“This is executive authority, especially in the Department of Homeland Security, running out of control,” said Senator Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat. “Do the members of Congress need security details to defend themselves from the executive branch? God, I hope not.”
The most recent instance came on Tuesday, when Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and a mayoral candidate, was arrested at an immigration courthouse in Lower Manhattan as he tried to escort a migrant whom agents were seeking to arrest.
The Department of Homeland Security suggested that Mr. Lander, who has trailed in polls of the mayoral race, was seeking to “undermine law enforcement safety to get a viral moment,” and said that he had assaulted law enforcement , claims he denied after his release later Tuesday.
Certainly, plenty of politicians over the years have gotten themselves arrested in an effort to draw attention to themselves or their cause. Many elected Democrats have rushed to show how fiercely they are opposing Mr. Trump’s administration, and have been rewarded for doing so by the party’s base. Accusations of grandstanding flowed in quickly from Republicans on Tuesday.
“Stop using this as a means of self promotion in an effort to make yourself relevant in advance of an election,” Representative Mike Lawler, a New York Republican, wrote on social media.
But to many Democrats, the images of the suit-and-tie-clad Mr. Lander being manhandled showed a chilling turn in the country’s politics.
“This is authoritarianism,” said Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president who is running to succeed Mr. Lander as comptroller. “The federal agents, masked, are detaining an American citizen, an elected official, who is exercising oversight over a process which is itself deeply troubling. This is a deliberate attempt at escalation by the Trump administration.”
“I’m worried about what comes next,” he added.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic House leader, was more explicit, saying in a statement that “the aggressive targeting of Democratic elected officials by the Trump administration will invariably result in law-abiding public servants being marked for death by violent extremists.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, suggested that law enforcement officers did not know or care about the political affiliations of those arrested.
“These politicians are trying to get their 15 minutes of fame and they are doing it on the backs and safety of law enforcement,” she said.
Mr. Lander’s arrest unfolded against a turbulent national backdrop. Many politicians are increasingly on edge about political violence and anything that might encourage it, after the assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband over the weekend.
At the same time, immigration politics have grown more volatile after Mr. Trump sent troops to Los Angeles, despite the objections of state and local authorities, to stamp out protests and help with raids rounding up migrants. In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have also aggressively sought to detain migrants at immigration courts, leading to emotional scenes as masked agents make surprise arrests of people who thought they were attending routine hearings.
Last week, Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, was forcibly removed from a news conference being held by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and handcuffed despite identifying himself as a senator. The use of force shattered traditional norms of showing deference to lawmakers.
“Like me, Mr. Lander had the audacity to question the legitimacy of federal actions, only to find himself handcuffed, pushed against a wall and detained,” Mr. Padilla said in a statement. “If it happened to us in full view of the public, imagine what is happening in communities across the country when the cameras are off. This should be a wake-up call to the country.”
Earlier this year, F.B.I. agents arrested a Milwaukee judge on charges that she had shielded an undocumented immigrant from federal agents. And last month, federal agents arrested Ras J. Baraka, the mayor of Newark, and later charged Representative LaMonica McIver of New Jersey, in connection with a clash outside an immigration detention center.
Leading Democrats are at once outraged by the Trump administration’s actions against immigrants — which have ensnared some American citizens — and keenly aware of how thorny the issues of immigration and law enforcement can be for their party.
They have stressed at every turn that protests must be peaceful, warning against playing into Mr. Trump’s hands.
But some Democrats think they are on firmer political ground when they frame their arguments around the need to uphold due process, casting themselves as the party of calm and order, and Republicans as the party of chaos and cruelty.
Representative Lou Correa, a California Democrat, said in an interview last week that immigration should be discussed in economic terms.
The lesson of the last election was, “message it on bread-and-butter issues,” Mr. Correa said. “This is not an immigration issue. This is an economic health issue of the state of California.”
Lisa Lerer and Michael Gold contributed reporting.
Katie Glueck is a Times national political reporter.
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