A Venezuelan data analyst for the New York City Council was abruptly seized Monday morning by federal agents during a routine immigration check-in at a federal building in Bethpage.
On Tuesday, lawyers for the analyst filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court to seek his release, and his City Council supporters rallied outside a Manhattan immigration building to demand his freedom.
The analyst is legally authorized to work in the United States until October and isn’t a criminal, council speaker Julie Menin said at an emergency news conference late Monday at City Hall. She declined to release the employee’s identity except to say he works for the council’s main office and that he is detained in Manhattan.
The Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday identified him as Rafael Andres Rubio Bohorquez. Department spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said he entered the country on a tourist visa that mandated his departure from the country by Oct. 22, 2017, and that he has been here illegally. She said that he has a criminal record, including for assault, but she did not provide details.
At the rally outside the federal building on Varick Street in lower Manhattan where the analyst is being detained, his supporters cursed ICE and expressed outrage that he was detained in the first place.
“Today, it’s our brother. Today, it’s our colleague. Today it’s our friend,” said Councilwoman Mercedes Narcisse (D-Brooklyn).
Lawyers for the staffer have filed the habeas corpus petition at U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, said Chloe Chik, communications director for the New York Legal Assistance Group, which she said filed the petition. She declined to provide a copy or to respond to Homeland Security’s statement about the staffer and his alleged criminal history, or his alleged presence in the country illegally.
Menin said at the news conference that the council learned the employee had been detained in Bethpage after he used his one phone call to reach the council’s human resources office and ask for help.
“A regular check-in quickly went awry. He was taken in and he was removed to a detention center,” Menin said.
The analyst, who as of late Monday was jailed at the federal building on Varick Street, is likely on a path to be removed from the United States “unless it can be stopped,” U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-Manhattan/Brooklyn) said at the Monday news conference.
Menin said when she called the listed phone number for the Bethpage facility, she couldn’t get through. The council so far has been unable to reach the employee’s family or immigration attorney. The council demands his return, she said.
“I’m an elected official running a body and I cannot contact a federal facility? What kind of accountability or transparency is that? Can you imagine what it’s like for a family whose loved one goes missing? What are his family members going through right now?” Menin said.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani tweeted criticism of the detention.
“I am outraged to hear a New York City Council employee was detained in Nassau County by federal immigration officials at a routine immigration appointment. This is an assault on our democracy, on our city, and our values. I am calling for his immediate release and will continue to monitor the situation”
Menin eventually reached the Department of Homeland Security, which provided little information except that the man would likely be moved to a third location to be detained.
Immigration officers under President Donald Trump, under similar circumstances, “try to whisk them down to Texas or Louisiana,” Goldman said, where administration officials “have pretty much total control over the immigration judges.”
Goldman noted that some of the judges — who all work for the sitting president and his administration — have been fired for ruling in favor of immigrants.
Newsday’s Bahar Ostadan contributed to this story.
Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.
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