The Nyc Council Says A Detained Employee Was Law Abiding. The Department Of Homeland Security Argues Otherwise.

NEW YORK — New York City Council members and Department of Homeland Security officials are offering clashing portraits of the legislative employee detained this week at an immigration court appointment.

Local lawmakers demanding the release of their colleague — a data analyst and Venezuelan national — describe him as hard-working, law-abiding and one of many immigrants caught up in the Trump administration’s dragnet. He provided legal work authorization and cleared all background checks, they said.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who disclosed that the man’s name is Rafael Andres Rubio Bohorquez, condemned a “criminal illegal alien” with an assault arrest on his record and a tourist visa that expired in 2017.

“He had no legal right to be in the United States,” McLaughlin said.

It’s not the first time the administration has contradicted details of arrests that local, state and federal elected Democrats have tracked in their districts. But it is the first time a City Council employee has been detained.

Rubio Bohorquez’s arrest Monday at a Long Island courthouse has ratcheted up tensions in deep-blue New York City, where anti-ICE demonstrators, including Democratic elected officials, routinely protest masked federal agents’ arresting immigrants. Some City Council members were attending a Monday evening rally protesting ICE’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good when they learned of Rubio Bohorquez’s arrest. They then rushed to an “emergency” news conference called by Council Speaker Julie Menin at City Hall.

“This man chose to work for the council, on behalf of the public, on behalf of New Yorkers, and despite every indication that he was doing everything the right way, he still found himself a victim of egregious government overreach,” Menin, a Manhattan Democrat, told reporters there.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y) said Tuesday that the detained council employee had Temporary Protected Status and subsequently obtained work authorization.

“Department of Homeland Security spokesperson ‘Tricia from Ohio,’ is back to doing what she does best: gaslighting the American people,” Goldman said, calling the DHS official’s statement about Rubio Bohorquez’s legal status “a bald-faced lie.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, council officials had not been able to contact Rubio Bohorquez, but were trying to reach his immigration attorney, they said. The New York Legal Assistance Group has filed an emergency habeas petition challenging his detention.

“We have confirmed this morning that the staffer is being held in New York State, confirming that the habeas petition was properly filed and preventing his removal from the state until his petition is resolved by a court,” Menin and Goldman said in a joint statement.

Dozens of council members and their unionized employees also gathered Tuesday outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in lower Manhattan where they say Rubio Bohorquez had been held — at least for a short while. Members of the council’s Progressive Caucus took turns lambasting the administration while there.

“Abolish ICE,” their handwritten signs read. “Fuck ICE,” more than one called out. They jointly called for ICE to get out of New York City.

“I’m an immigrant, and every single time the deportation machine takes one of us and kidnaps us and disappears us, we should be able to see ourselves in their faces and in their stories,” Council Member Carmen De La Rosa said.