Veteran charged with arson after blaze at Manhattan ICE facility

MANHATTAN (CN) — The 43-year-old man accused of setting a fire outside of a federal immigration building in New York City appeared in federal court Tuesday, where he was charged with one count of arson of government property.

Andrew Arrabaca, a U.S. Army veteran who served from 2001 to 2005 and worked as a mechanic on a missile defense system, was arrested on Monday after prosecutors say he poured gasoline on the ground in front of 26 Federal Plaza, set it ablaze and threw fireworks into the flames, causing an explosion and a cloud of smoke to billow into the Lower Manhattan streets.

The charge carries a mandatory minimum of seven years in prison.

Making his initial appearance on Tuesday, Arrabaca sat stoically in the federal courtroom flanked by two federal defenders, who asked a judge to let their client seek treatment at a Veterans Affairs hospital as opposed to sending him to jail.

Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky ultimately declined and sent him to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

“The crime you’re charged with is troubling,” Tarnofsky said. “The nature and circumstances, the fact that it was planned over time and the fact that it was carried out at a time where it can be expected that it would cause significant harm.”

Federal prosecutors say Arrabaca acted Monday morning during the rush hour commute. Prior to setting the fire, they say he fired shots from an airsoft rifle and set off fireworks on the sidewalk.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Samantha Fry told the court that after his arrest, Arrabaca engaged in a “lengthy post-arrest interview in which he admitted to planning and carrying out the attack.” She added Arrabaca had been planning it since January, and has spent the past several months purchasing supplies and weapons — including two axes, a hammer, a machete, the airsoft gun and the fireworks.

“Over the last few months, he went to several other sites and locations, bringing with him certain of those materials and considered whether to attack those locations,” Fry told the court, adding Arrabaca “also understood that he, himself, could have died in the attack.

Prosecutors say Arrabaca’s last known address was in Harlem, but has recently been living out of his car and slept in a park the night before the incident.

James Barnacle, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, said at a press conference on Monday that Arrabaca was an “anti-American, anti-government extremist,” who targeted 26 Federal Plaza because of his disdain for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“He had a cart; he had anti-ICE literature on it,” Barnacle said. “When he was being arrested, he yelled derogatory terms toward ICE, used bad words.”

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that Arrabaca had a sign reading “ICE Off Our Streets” in the cart.

Barnacle said the incident caused the cancellation of a naturalization ceremony and injured an immigrant heading to court.

“So that’s quite unfortunate and quite ironic at the same time,” he said.

Three people in total were injured, including two federal employees, according to law enforcement.

Arrabaca is due back in court Aug. 4.

In the meantime, the government was ordered to instruct the Metropolitan Detention Center to evaluate Arrabaca’s mental health over the next several days, though Tarnofsky acknowledged that the troubled Brooklyn jail “is not all that well set up for providing mental health treatment.”

“This is someone who, notwithstanding what he appears to have done, is someone who has served our country and I think is clearly ill,” the judge said before adjourning on Tuesday.

Also known as the Jacob Javits building, 26 Federal Plaza houses multiple federal agencies, including Manhattan’s largest immigration court and a controversial temporary ICE holding facility that has been criticized for overcrowding, hygienic concerns and subpar access to legal representation.

The 41-floor government office has become a controversial centerpiece of the second Trump administration’s mass deportation effort. For months, ICE took the unprecedented step of stationing officers directly outside the building’s 12th-floor immigration courtrooms, making arrests as noncitizens showed up for court-ordered hearings.

A federal judge largely banned the practice in May, but the agency continues to make some arrests in the building.

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