President Donald Trump’s needlessly rough and cruel attitude for ICE in his mission to round up as many people as possible for the mass deportation of millions, including non-criminals, has extended to elected officials, with city Comptroller Brad Lander being detained at immigration court Downtown as he attempted to escort a man following a hearing. ICE is brooking no dissent.

The arrest of Lander, who was released after a few hours, followed the aggressive detention of California Sen. Alex Padilla as he tried to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question last week, the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and indictment of New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver stemming from the same May incident at a detention facility.

In each of these cases, federal personnel had some ostensible reason for their actions; Lander can be seen holding onto the man he was escorting, Padilla approached Noem at a public press conference, while Baraka and McIver were attempting to enter a heavily secure facility.

The administration wants you to believe these circumstances mean they were justified in these actions, but each case really is just a pretext to interfere with elected officials asking questions on behalf of constituents, exercising oversight roles or making decisions about their jurisdictions with the objective of dissuading this in the future.

In each case, officials knew who they were detaining. Baraka and McIver had arrived as part of a congressional delegation — who, it’s worth noting, the federal government is by law obligated to allow in to conduct facilities inspections — while Padilla is captured on video loudly and clearly announcing that he is a United States senator.

A reporter for The City heard a federal agent asking another “do you want to arrest the comptroller?” before Lander was handcuffed. The charges are so ridiculous that Lander’s and Baraka’s were immediately dropped, with a judge raking prosecutors over the coals in the latter case. Still, the Justice Department is bewilderingly insisting on attempting to prosecute McIver, a sitting member of Congress engaging in the type of oversight that she was expressly permitted to do by law.

What Trump and his lackeys ultimately want is not the safety of their officers — whom they are openly putting at risk by having them engage in aggressive operations while unidentified, raising concerns that they could be targeted by people who are unaware if they’re federal agents or not — but the silencing of criticism.

They have roughed up these officials for the same reason that they have gone after universities and law firms: these are the actors best equipped to push back on the administration’s authoritarian efforts.

Smaller organizations or less prominent individuals are going to find themselves even less likely to speak out politically seeing what happens to more powerful critics. If you are an ordinary citizen, you are probably much less likely to use your First Amendment rights once you’ve seen elected representatives tossed to the ground and arrested for speaking out.

Yet that’s why it’s important for elected officials to keep sticking their necks out; it signals that the administration won’t succeed at shutting down dissent. Judges should make it clear this tactic is unacceptable.

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