""We learned about this very disturbing situation late this afternoon when this employee called the City Council HR appointment for help and told them he had been detained," Menin said during an emergency press conference she called on Jan. 12."
""We immediately reached out to the ICE facility office at the Bethpage facility, but shockingly, the phone number doesn't even work. It says that the number is disconnected. There is no public information about how to reach someone who is being detained at the Bethpage facility," Menin said. "There's actually no way to reach out to this individual, and I just want to be clear, as Speaker of the City Council, I cannot even call this ICE detention center to collect information.""
""This is, I want to say, the first time this has ever happened to a City Council Employee, and it must be the only time that this ever happens. But unfortunately, this breach of liberty is hardly an exception," Menin said."
A New York City Council data analyst from Venezuela was detained by ICE on Long Island during a routine immigration hearing. The employee held legal permission to remain in the U.S. until October and was on a work visa. The employee contacted City Council HR to report the detention and was initially held at the Bethpage facility. City Council staff were unable to reach the Bethpage facility because the listed phone number was disconnected and no public contact information was available. The detainee was later transferred to a Varick Street detention center in Lower Manhattan. The employee has no arrest or conviction record, and the detention was called an unprecedented breach of liberty for a Council employee.
Read at Brooklyn Paper
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