Army veteran arrested after fiery attack outside New York ICE office

New York, July 21 (SocialNews.XYZ) The heightened tensions over confrontations with immigration enforcement officers have taken a dangerous turn with an ex-Army man launching a fiery attack on the agency’s office here.

Outside the federal building housing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and various government agencies, the man poured petrol, lit it, set off fireworks and fired shots on Monday, injuring three people, authorities said.

It followed the shooting deaths of two people during traffic stops by ICE agents this month and the death of another man who was killed by a truck when he was fleeing the agency officers last week.

Wheeling a cart with a poster, "ICE Off Our Streets”, Andrew Arrabaca, 43, who had worked on the Patriot missile system when he was in the Army, carried out the attack shortly before the offices were to open, police said.

He was arrested immediately after the incident, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which has offices in the building.

"Mr. Arrabaca came armed, with bad intentions," FBI Assistant Director James Barnacle said. "He did say he was targeting the building and did say he was OK if he hurt people".

The fire was put out before it could reach the building, and he was subdued before he could use the axes, hammer and machete he had with him, according to officials.

They also recovered two air rifles, and Barnacle said he had fired some pellets.

The FBI said that a man waiting to enter the building for an interview in the immigration office there was injured, as were two police officers who tried to subdue the attacker.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has been a critic of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and had declared that the city would not cooperate with enforcement against illegal migrants, said, "We will support the federal investigation".

He added that he would “hold accountable anyone who threatens the safety of people".

The building, which also houses a jail to temporarily hold those arrested on immigration-related charges, has been the target of protests.

On July 7, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican, was killed when his vehicle was fired upon by an ICE agent who said that he had tried to run him down in Houston, Texas.

A Colombian citizen, Sebastián Durán Guerrero, was killed in Biddeford, Maine, under similar circumstances on July 13.

The next day, Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran, a Mexican visiting the US on a tourist visa, died when he fled into traffic in Florida after ICE agents confronted him and other men.

Officials accused the two men who were shot of “weaponising” vehicles against ICE agents.

Emotions have run high over these incidents, when there were already several protests against immigration enforcement.

Last week, Acting Assistant Homeland Secretary Lauren Bis accused Democrats and activists of spreading "dangerous smears and hoaxes” against ICE.

She called on them “and the media to turn the temperature down and stop calling for violence and resistance against ICE law enforcement”.

Democrat Representative Pramila Jayapal has led a campaign to demand an independent inquiry into the two shooting incidents.

“We are calling for immediate independent investigations into both of these deaths, without interference”, her letter, cosigned by 197 Democratic members of Congress, demanded from the Trump administration.

Democratic Party’s Senate Leader Chuck Schumer asserted in a harsh statement, “The Trump administration rushed 12,000 agents onto our streets without ensuring they were fit to carry a badge and a gun”.

Homeland Security officials temporarily suspended traffic stops by ICE agents last week, but Trump countermanded the order.

Defending the ICE officers, he wrote on Truth Social, “We must be tough, strong, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP”!

Source: IANS