Rep. Nadler wants inquiry after Homeland Security handcuffs staffer in his NY office

New York Rep. Jerry Nadler on Monday demanded a congressional investigation into a incident last week, first reported by Gothamist, in which Department of Homeland Security police handcuffed a member of Nadler’s staff in the lawmaker’s Manhattan office.

In an interview with CNN, the Democrat told CNN that his office is writing House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, to request a hearing and investigation into the incident and others involving federal immigration enforcement. A spokesperson for Jordan did not respond to a request for comment.

“The tactics were totally unacceptable,” Nadler told CNN about the incident, which took place last Wednesday. “And they needed a warrant.”

The lawmaker’s comments follow a Gothamist report Friday on the encounter between DHS police and Nadler staffers at the federal building on Varick Street in Lower Manhattan. Nadler’s sixth-floor office is a floor above a federal immigration court.

Nadler’s office initially declined to comment on the incident, except to state that no staffer had been arrested. The lawmaker told CNN that he decided to speak out after DHS released a “misleading and frankly lying” account of what happened.

The video obtained by Gothamist shows a DHS officer handcuffing the crying aide, as another officer tries to enter a private area of the office, over the objections of another staffer who requests a warrant before acceding to the demand. None of the staff members were arrested or charged with a crime.

The officers are heard claiming the Nadler staffers are “harboring rioters” and that the detained aide had pushed an officer.

In a statement later, a DHS spokesperson said officers were responding to information that protesters were in the office, which is a floor above a federal immigration court, and they visited “to ensure the safety and well-being of those present.” The DHS statement said the officers temporarily detained one individual who prevented them from conducting a security check.

Nadler said he disputes the DHS narrative.

He told CNN that DHS officers were upset that some of his staff members had been watching DHS officers detain migrants at an immigration court in the same building, and that his staff invited some other people observing the arrests up to his office one floor above.

After one of his staffers demanded a warrant, Nadler said, the officers “barged in” and pushed another aide, who they later handcuffed.

In a statement posted on X on Saturday, Nadler accused DHS and President Donald Trump of “sowing chaos in our communities” and using “intimidation tactics against both citizens and non-citizens in a reckless and dangerous manner.”

He decried DHS’s tactics as “aggressive and heavy-handed” and said the event displayed “a deeply troubling disregard for proper legal boundaries.”

Nadler also accused the Trump administration of trying to intimidate members of Congress in an interview with the New York Times. “They’re behaving like fascists,” he told the Times.

The incident comes at a time of heightened tension between Democratic lawmakers and the executive branch over federal immigration enforcement, including Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Rep. LaMonica McIver arrests last month in connection with protests outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.

It also comes as there have been an increasing number of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests at immigration courthouses across the country in recent days.

The Trump administration, promising the largest deportation effort in the nation’s history, announced in January it would no longer treat venues such as courthouses and schools as “protected” sites and off-limits to immigration enforcement.

ICE spokesperson Marie Ferguson said those arrested at immigration courthouses would be subject to expedited removal, a process by which individuals can be summarily removed from the country without hearings before immigration judges.

Asked about the incident on CNN on Sunday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused the Trump administration of “clearly trying to intimidate Democrats.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, at an unrelated press conference on Sunday, said the dramatic encounter was “unbelievable.”