Members of the City Council pulled no punches on Tuesday in reacting to ICE’s detainment of a City Council staffer during what was supposed to be a routine hearing on Long Island Monday.
The staffer, 53-year-old Rafael Andres Rubio Bohorquez, was detained by ICE during an immigration hearing in Bethpage. City Council Speaker Julie Menin announced Bohorquez’s detention at an emergency press conference Monday night; the New York Legal Assistance Group has since filed legal paperwork to keep the City Council worker detained by ICE in the state.
Menin and U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman said in a statement Tuesday that Bohorquez is being held in New York state; a habeas petition filed in federal court will prevent his removal from New York, pending a court resolution.
Bohorquez, a data analyst with the council, had a clean criminal record, Speaker Menin said Monday night. However, federal Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin, in a New York Times report, claimed that the staffer had a previous arrest for an assault and had overstayed his visa back in 2017. He did have work authorization.
Despite McLaughlin’s claims, Bohorquez “cleared the standard background check conducted for all applicants,” Menin and Goldman said Tuesday. The Congress member also slammed McLaughlin’s claims as lies, noting that Bohorquez had “Temporary Protected Status (TPS) because of the brutal Maduro regime and then obtained work authorization pursuant to that status.”
“Department of Homeland Security spokesperson ‘Tricia from Ohio,’ is back to doing what she does best: gaslighting the American people,” Goldman said. “Her statement that the staffer ‘had no legal right to be in the United States’ is a bald-faced lie. In truth, the NYC Council employee was lawfully in the United States and properly authorized to work here.”
The Council states that they have still been unable to contact Rubio Bohorquez’s lawyer.
Meanwhile, on Jan. 13, his colleagues and elected officials rallied outside of the Lower Manhattan detention center, where it was initially believed he was being held.
Manhattan City Council Member Harvey Epstein summed up the arrest in one word: “Outrageous.”
“This is outrageous that the federal government is doing this. Outrageous,” Council Member Harvey Epstein said. “It is an outrageous abuse of power, and we have to call shame on the federal government and the federal administration, who is doing this to regular New Yorkers. And the council is going to fight as hard as they can, along with the staff, to make sure that this doesn’t continue to happen.”
Others, like Bronx Council Member Pierina Sanchez, became emotional, with tears welling in her eyes and fury spilling from her lips. She vehemently denounced the detainment.
“They are not coming for just criminals. They’re coming for all of us, all of us!” Sanchez roared. “We will not stand for it. ICE, get the f*ck out of this city!”
Rubio Bohorquez has worked as a research analyst for about a year, and, once detained, used his only phone call to reach out to the City Council’s human resources department.
The arrest also drew the ire of Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
“This is an assault on our democracy, on our city, and our values,” Mamdani said in a Monday statement. “I am calling for his immediate release and will continue to monitor the situation.”
