Federal officers entered Representative Jerry Nadler’s office in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday and handcuffed and briefly detained one of his aides. The confrontation happened shortly after the aide observed federal agents detaining migrants in a public hallway outside an immigration courtroom in the same building as the congressman’s office.
The episode was recorded by someone who was sitting in Mr. Nadler’s office. In the video, an officer with the Federal Protective Service, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is shown demanding access to a private area inside the office. The video was obtained by Gothamist, which earlier reported the confrontation.
“You’re harboring rioters in the office,” the federal agent, whose name tag and officer number are not visible in the video, says to a member of Mr. Nadler’s staff.
There were no riots reported on Wednesday at the federal building on Varick Street, though protesters and immigrant rights advocates gathered inside and outside the building earlier in the day. The immigration court is on the fifth floor and Mr. Nadler’s office is on the sixth.
The agents entered Mr. Nadler’s office because they had been told that protesters were there and were concerned for the safety of his staff members, according to a statement on Saturday from the Department of Homeland Security.
When they arrived, “one individual became verbally confrontational and physically blocked access to the office,” the statement said. That person, an aide to the congressman, was detained so the officers could complete their safety check, according to the statement.
In the video, a second aide standing at a door in the office asks one of the agents to show her a warrant. The agent says the officers do not need a warrant and walks past her.
Robert Gottheim, Mr. Nadler’s chief of staff, strongly disputed the Homeland Security Department’s description of events. Instead, he said, it appeared the agents were angry because members of the congressman’s staff had seen the officers detaining migrants in the building, and because advocates who had also witnessed the detentions outside the courtroom had been invited by the staff members to Mr. Nadler’s office.
“The Trump administration is trying to intimidate members of Congress,” Mr. Nadler said in an interview on Saturday. “They’re behaving like fascists.”
A handful of people gathered around 1 p.m. on Wednesday in the hallway near the immigration courtroom to advise migrants of their right to stay silent as they were taken into custody, according to an immigrant rights advocate in attendance who spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns of reprisal from federal law enforcement.
Separately, a group of demonstrators had gathered outside of the building, Mr. Gottheim said. They were there to protest an initiative by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain people as they leave immigration courts, the latest escalation by the Trump administration in its effort to ramp up deportations.
In the hallway outside the courtroom, federal agents questioned the observers about their presence there, and threatened to arrest them for loitering, the advocate said. As tensions flared, a member of Mr. Nadler’s staff invited the advocates upstairs to de-escalate the situation, Mr. Gottheim said.
Under the Trump administration, the Homeland Security Department has increased its use of expedited removals. Officers have gathered outside immigration courtrooms across the United States and have immediately arrested migrants who have been ordered to be deported or whose cases have been dismissed.
Last week, federal agents detained a 20-year-old man from Venezuela at an immigration courthouse in New York City. It was the first reported instance of a public school student in the city being apprehended by federal officials, and it represented a major escalation in the administration’s efforts to find, detain and deport migrants.
Those efforts have required close coordination between government lawyers and ICE officers waiting to make the arrests, according to immigration lawyers and internal documents obtained by The New York Times.
In previous political eras, the detainment of a congressman’s aide by federal law enforcement agents and the search of his office without presenting a judicial warrant might have prompted an outcry, Mr. Nadler said on Saturday. But the current Republican majority in Congress staunchly supports Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, Mr. Nadler said, and has remained mostly silent as the president pushes the boundaries of executive power.
That leaves even a member of Congress with little recourse, he said.
“The Trump administration is really using totalitarian or even authoritarian practices,” Mr. Nadler said. “We have to fight them. We don’t want to be a fascist country.”
Christopher Maag is a reporter covering the New York City region for The Times.
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