New York City Comptroller, Democratic mayoral aspirant Brad Lander, found himself in federal custody following his intervention in an immigration enforcement action, having physically interposed himself with an individual targeted for detention and vociferously demanding evidentiary substantiation of the legal basis for said detention; Lander's presence at the Manhattan federal edifice was ostensibly for the purpose of observing immigration court proceedings, and his subsequent arrest, decried by fellow Democratic contenders and politicos, transpires against a backdrop of escalating apprehensions occurring in the penumbral spaces of immigration tribunals, an ostensible outgrowth of the preceding administration's hardline immigration prerogatives.