A man set off an incendiary device outside a federal building in Lower Manhattan on Monday morning, poured gasoline on the ground and fired an airsoft rifle, according to the FBI as reported by ABC7. Three people were hurt.
What the FBI says happened
The building is 26 Federal Plaza, which houses an immigration court. The attack took place Monday morning, July 20.
The bureau identified the man in custody as Andrew Arrabaca, 43, a former soldier who served from 2001 to 2005. James Barnacle, an FBI assistant director, described him as "an anti-American, anti-government extremist," and said that after his arrest Arrabaca stated he was targeting the building and "was OK if he hurt or killed people going in and out."
Two government employees and one civilian suffered minor injuries. The civilian was an immigrant who was there for an immigration hearing.
The device, the FBI said, was made from gasoline, a lighter and a large firework in a canister. Arrabaca was also carrying two axes, a hammer, a machete, three knives and several more incendiary devices, and had anti-ICE literature and a sign reading "ICE Off Our Streets."
As of the reporting, no charges had been filed. This account comes from the FBI's initial statements carried by ABC7 and the Associated Press; it is an early, official account of an active investigation, and details may be revised.
The grim contradiction in it
The facts, as the FBI presents them, sit uncomfortably against each other, and it is worth stating that plainly rather than smoothing it over.
The man was carrying material opposing ICE, and he attacked a building that houses an immigration court. But the person he is said to have injured among the civilians was an immigrant attending a hearing, and the FBI says he was indifferent to whether he hurt or killed the people going in and out, who at an immigration court are overwhelmingly immigrants and their families.
Whatever grievance was being expressed, the people in the path of it were the people the stated cause claims to defend. Political violence has this property regularly: it damages, first and most reliably, whoever happens to be nearest to it.
Why it belongs on an LA front page
Los Angeles is not New York, and this happened 2,500 miles away. It runs here for two reasons.
The first is that immigration enforcement has been the most volatile issue in this city for the past year, with its own confrontations, and an attack on an immigration court is part of the same national story that plays out in courtrooms and neighborhoods here.
The second is the more sober one. This is the second item on this evening's front page touching immigration and the temperature around it, after a California airport dispute in which an airline agent invoked ICE against a customer. The two events are utterly different in scale, and it would be wrong to equate a rude remark with an attempt to burn a building. But they are readings from the same thermometer, and the thermometer is high.
We report this one carefully, from official statements, precisely because early accounts of violent events are so often wrong in their particulars. What is established is that a man attacked a courthouse, that three people were hurt, and that the person accused was, by the FBI's account, prepared to kill.
