Anti-ICE Army vet sets off fireworks, lights blaze, fires pellet gun outside NYC’s 26 Federal Plaza

A lone anti-ICE protester launched fireworks that grazed a bystander outside 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan Monday morning, poured gasoline over the entrance stairs and set them alight, and fired a pellet gun, authorities said.

U.S. Army veteran Andrew Arrabaca, wearing a military-style helmet and pulling a cart with a sign reading “ICE off our streets,” allegedly set off the fireworks — and inadvertently injured an asylum seeker. He then started the blaze by bushes lining an employee entrance to the building that towers over Foley Square around 8:20 a.m., FBI and NYPD officials said.

He was quickly detained by federal officers and taken into custody, with authorities recovering two airsoft rifles from his belongings. Charges against him were pending in Manhattan Federal Court.

James Barnacle, the assistant director of the FBI’s New York field division, said the 43-year-old former soldier served from 2001 to 2005, while in his early 20s, repairing Patriot missile systems. He said the suspect willingly spoke with authorities Monday after being read his rights.

“His goal was to target the building,” Barnacle said. “He did say he was targeting the building and it was okay if he hurt or killed people going in or out of the building, whether they were federal employees or civilians.”

Two Federal Protective Service officers and a security guard with a company that provides services at the building tackled Arrabaca to the ground after he fired several pellets at the building. An FBI agent then jumped in and arrested him, Barnacle said.

One of the FPS officers suffered minor injuries.

A lone civilian injured was at 26 Federal Plaza for a hearing to apply for asylum. “So that’s quite unfortunate but quite ironic at the same time,” Barnacle said. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said a bystander was grazed by the fireworks.

In addition to the fireworks and air rifles, the U.S. Army veteran was armed with “two axes, a hammer, a machete and three… fixed-blade knives,” Barnacle said.

A DHS spokesperson said investigators also recovered a manifesto in Arrabaca’s bag.

Arrabaca is from Poughkeepsie and his most recent address is in Harlem, where he traveled from to Penn Station late Sunday before sleeping in the vicinity of the Holland Tunnel and then making his way to Lower Manhattan around 5 a.m., Barnacle said.

A law enforcement source said the suspect is outspoken on Instagram about various causes and appears to have attended a pro-Palestinian rally at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn earlier this year.

The NYPD Bomb Squad and FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force remained at the cordoned off scene on Worth St. near Centre St. hours later investigating the wild incident. Barnacle said the building remained open, but some agencies decided to close business for the day. A naturalization ceremony was canceled.

“What occurred outside of 26 Federal Plaza this morning was deeply disturbing,” Mayor Mamdani said. “I’m relieved that no one was seriously injured and that a suspect is in custody.”

“Our administration will continue to ensure that every New Yorker is safe in their city, and that we hold anyone accountable who threatens that,” he added.

The 41-story skyscraper has repeatedly been at the center of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration in New York, prompting multiple protests, including two last year resulting in the arrest of Brad Lander, the former city comptroller and Democratic congressional candidate, who beat the corresponding violations at a trial in May.

In the year following Trump’s return to power, more than one thousand undocumented people seeking asylum were taken into custody by ICE agents donning balaclavas on the 12th and 14th floors of 26 Federal Plaza. The practice was criticized by advocates and others as cruelly targeting rule followers as low-hanging fruit to meet quotas.

Those arrested — many of them torn from their crying children — were detained in squalid conditions for days at a time on the 10th floor, which Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan earlier this year deemed inhumane.

ICE claimed the floor was merely used as a processing center to briefly hold detainees before they were shipped to detention sites across the country.

Another Manhattan judge earlier this year barred ICE from detaining people seeking asylum and other forms of relief inside the building in most circumstances after the agency admitted it lacked authority to carry out the mass arrests.

ICE has separately admitted that it misled the court about how many detainees were packed into cramped cells at a time.

In addition to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, the building houses other federal offices, including the FBI’s New York field division and the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office.