City Council staffers rally after federal immigration agents arrest colleague

Federal agents arrested a City Council staffer during a routine court check-in Monday afternoon in Bethpage, Long Island, Council Speaker Julie Menin announced on Monday.  Rubio Bohorquez has worked as a data analyst in the Council’s central staff for about a year and has legal authorization to remain in the United States through October, Menin said.  

“We are doing everything in our power to get him released,” the speaker said during an evening press conference.  

Bohorquez was moved to a detention center on Varick Street in lower Manhattan shortly after his arrest, Menin said. She explained that in the detention center, Bohorquez was given one phone call and dialed the Council’s human resources department to tell them that he had been arrested. 

Bohorquez was not a member of the union representing City Council staff, The Association of Legislative Employees, its president, Matt Malloy, told The Chief Monday night. Malloy said Monday that the arrest was “horrific." He argued given that the employee had legal status, something similar “could happen to anyone.”

Hours after Menin’s announcement, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in a statement, called for Bohorquez’s release.  

“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,” he said. “This is an assault on our democracy, on our city, and our values.” 

Representative Dan Goldman, who joined Menin at the Monday announcement, said that Bohorquez was from Venezuela. He appeared alongside council members Shaun Abreu, Alexa Aviles and Harvey Epstein as well as Murad Awawdeh, the President and CEO of The New York Immigration Coalition. 

In a press release, the Department of Homeland Security asserted that Bohorquez was illegally employed and had no right to be in the U.S.

“A criminal illegal alien with no authorization to work in the U.S being employed by the New York City Council is shocking,” DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.  

Rally held 

Midday on Tuesday, the ALE led a raucous rally outside of the Varick street detention center in response to the arrest of Bohorquez. Dozens of Council staffers attended as did a half-dozen members of the City Council who condemned DHS for arresting the staffer and calling for his release.  

Matt Malloy, president of the Association of Legislative Employees, addresses the crowd at Tuesday's protest calling for the release of a detained Council staffer.

Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit

At the rally, Malloy reiterated that Bohorquez was detained when he was attempting to follow the law. He said that the ALE and Council are demanding Bohorquez’s immediate release and would do everything they could to bring Bohorquez home. 

 “It was not surprising at all that minutes after this was announced every Council staffer asked the same question: ‘what can we do? How can we help?'” he said. 

Also at the rally, Chloe Chick, communications director from the New York Legal Assistance group, said that the legal aid organization was representing Bohorquez and had filed a habeas corpus petition Monday evening in an effort to get Bohorquez released.  

“We are hoping we can get him out of detention and home,” she said.  

Tensions have been high between federal immigration agents and local communities across the U.S. since a federal agents shot and killed a resident of Minneapolis Minnesota in her car last week. Renee Good was part of a group of activist Minnesotans who monitor the movements of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in order to warn local community members of their presence. 

Variations of those groups are found across the county, including New York City, made up of Americans from all walks of life. Since her shooting death, protests have sprung up across the country honoring Good and calling for ICE to stop its violence.  

“This is unacceptable and is the exact kind of problem we’re seeing not just in this one specific instance but throughout our entire country,” Malloy said. “This is bigger than our coworker who was detained. This has a lot more to do with the way ICE is conducting themselves in the United States and we’re here to say that the Association of Legislative Employees will not stand for it, and that the City Council will not stand for it, and that we are unified as a body from wall to wall.”