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