{"id":513929,"date":"2026-01-13T21:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T21:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/513929\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T21:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T21:02:10","slug":"new-york-city-council-data-analyst-rafael-andres-rubio-bohorquez-detained-by-ice-in-nassau-county-long-island-sparking-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/513929\/","title":{"rendered":"New York City Council data analyst Rafael Andres Rubio Bohorquez detained by ICE in Nassau County, Long Island, sparking protests"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK — A fired up crowd rallied Tuesday afternoon to call for the immediate release of a New York City Council employee from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The detained employee works as a data analyst at City Hall. Homeland Security officials identified him as Rafael Andres Rubio Bohorquez, a 53-year-old immigrant from Venezuela.<\/p>\n

City Council officials say he was legally allowed to stay in the country through October as he worked through the courts to become a citizen.<\/p>\n

But the Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration no longer recognizes his status and claims he has been in the U.S. illegally since 2017.<\/p>\n

Authorities maintain he has a previous arrest for assault, but councilmembers claim he signed a statement claiming he had never been arrested.<\/p>\n

Rubio Bohorquez was detained by ICE during an appointment in Bethpage in Nassau County, New York earlier Monday, according to New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin.<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO:<\/strong> Minnesota, Minneapolis, Saint Paul file lawsuit to stop ICE’s ‘federal invasion’<\/a><\/p>\n

“DHS confirmed that this employee had gone in for a routine court appointment and was nevertheless detained. They provided no other basis for his detainment,” Menin said during a press briefing on Monday. “On the contrary, he was a City Council employee who is doing everything right. He went to the court when he was asked.”<\/p>\n

Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he’s “outraged” by the employee’s detainment, and added that he’s “calling for his immediate release and will continue to monitor the situation.”<\/p>\n

Democratic New York Congressman Dan Goldman said the employee is of Venezuelan descent and is a “law-abiding immigrant with work authorization.”<\/p>\n

“I want to be very clear: There is no indication that there’s anything about this individual other than his immigration status that caused him to be arrested,” he said during a press briefing on Monday.<\/p>\n

However, the Department of Homeland Security responded in statement, saying the employee had no work authorization, is a “a criminal illegal alien from Venezuela and an employee of New York’s City Council,” and that his criminal history includes an arrest for assault.<\/p>\n

Rubio Bohorquez has been transferred to a detention center in Manhattan.<\/p>\n

A habeas hearing has been scheduled for Friday before Judge John Cronan in federal court. The government will not be able to move him from the state until that hearing takes place.<\/p>\n

ABC News contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 WABC-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK — A fired up crowd rallied Tuesday afternoon to call for the immediate release of a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":513930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[229562,5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-513929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-229562","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkcity","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115889815363181604","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}