Good afternoon! All eyes are on Minnesota these days, as the aftermath of the Renee Good shooting sparks violent altercations between ICE officials and protesters, indiscriminate immigration arrests and White House threats to invoke the Insurrection Act. In the meantime, ICE remains hot in New York City.
A City Council staffer named Rafael Andres Rubio Bohorquez was detained by federal agents during a routine asylum interview in Bethpage, Long Island, on Jan. 12, drawing public outcry and condemnation from Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani. But Bohorquez is far from the only one. According to a Gothamist investigation, at least 14 other people have been arrested at the New York asylum office in Bethpage while pursuing legal channels to remain in the United States.
“This is an assault on our democracy, on our city, and our values,” Mamdani wrote on X. “I am calling for his immediate release and will continue to monitor the situation.”
ICE is hard at work north of the city as well. The agency announced its intention to convert an old warehouse in Chester, NY, into a “processing center” with space to hold up to 1,500 detainees.
“Any increase in local bed space for ICE detention enables ICE to be more aggressive in their raids and their enforcement tactics because they have beds to immediately put people,” Rosa Cohen-Cruz, the director of Immigration Policy at Bronx Defenders, told the CITY.
Protestors marched across the Brooklyn Bridge on Monday, MLK Day, to protest the federal government’s deployment of ICE officers into New York and of the officers’ treatment of the people they detain.
Mayor Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders rallied with nurses on Tuesday during the ninth day of the New York State Nurses Association strike.
Comptroller Mark Levine received a request from an opposition group to probe the city’s legal agreement with Tony Hawk’s foundation to build a skate park in Mount Prospect Park.
Kianna Underwood, a former star of Nickelodeon’s “All That” and voice actor on Nick Jr.’s “Little Bill,” was killed Friday in a hit-and-run in Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn Nets, down a few star players, lost to the Phoenix Suns last night.
More than a month after listing, Brooklyn’s highest apartment, a 92nd-floor penthouse in Brooklyn Tower, listed for $16.75 million, still hasn’t sold.
Our World In Photos
Photo: Joel Carrett/AAP Image via AP
MELBOURNE — ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ — it looks like a surprise attack on the world of Tennis fashion: Naomi Osaka of Japan walks onto Rod Laver Arena for her first round match against Antonia Ruzic of Croatia at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026.
For more pictures like this, see Our World in Photos.
Democratic Brooklyn star power turns out for newest City Councilmember
From left: Hon. Marisa Arrabito; Brooklyn Democratic Party Chair and Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, D-42; District Leader Angela Kravtchenko, D-46; District Leader Julio Pena, D-51; District Leader Jacqui Painter, D-51; and District Leader Aaron Ouyang, D-52. Photo by Wayne Daren Schneiderman
Kayla Santosuosso, the former chief counsel for Justin Brannan, was officially inducted as the 47th District’s councilmember on Sunday, Jan. 18. She represents Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bath Beach, Seagate and Coney Island. The community swearing-in ceremony took place at Telecommunications High School
State Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, a surprise guest at the induction, told the crowd that he can say, with confidence, “you can have no greater advocate for city council than Kayla.”
🔎 Today’s history lesson
In Brooklyn, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the American Dream
In August 1963, five years before his death, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously told the nation about a dream he had. Many aren’t aware, however, that King had mused upon many of these same thoughts in a speech delivered at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights in February of that same year.
The Rev. Harry Kruener, Plymouth’s widely respected senior minister during that period, had extended an invitation to King the previous autumn.
Plymouth (called Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims at that time) had been designated a National Historic Landmark as a foremost center of anti-slavery sentiment before the outbreak of the Civil War, under the leadership of the world-famous Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.
As a leading stop on the Underground Railroad, it was fitting that King took up Kruener’s offer to visit Plymouth.
In his Brooklyn sermon, King discussed the American Dream and the dream of world peace.
“America is essentially a dream — yet unfulfilled,” he told the congregation. “Now, there are several things that must be done in order to make this dream a reality. In order to make the American Dream real, we must be concerned about the world dream of peace and brotherhood. The world in which we live today is geographically one. Now we are challenged to make it one in terms of brotherhood and therefore every person of goodwill must have a world perspective.”
Later in his sermon, King emphasized a notion that still, unfortunately, percolates at the fringes of American society today.
“The other thing that is so basic and necessary in order to make this dream a reality, is to get rid of the notion once and for all, that there are superior and inferior races. This idea still lingers around in spite of the evidence of great thinkers and the sciences.”
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Cartoon Sketchbook
By Monte Wolverton
For the Road
Author chat: Elliot Williams, a CNN legal analyst, wrote his first book, “Five Bullets: The Story of Bernie Goetz, New York’s Explosive ’80s, and the Subway Vigilante Trial That Divided the Nation,” about the 1984 Bernhard Goetz subway shooting. The book was released today, Jan. 20, and Williams will be joined by Errol Louis at Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene for a conversation and signing of “Five Bullets” on Feb. 11. Learn more about Williams here.
Happy Birthday to “The Office” star Rainn Wilson!
On This Day in 1907, the Eagle reported, “Brooklyn has many things to distinguish it commercially, not the least of which is the macaroni industry, which thrives here to a larger extent than in any other American city.”
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