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Authorities in New York City are investigating an explosion on Monday morning outside an FBI building in lower Manhattan that reportedly injured three people.
Investigators said a person who allegedly threw an incendiary device at the scene was taken into custody. The FBI later released the name in a press conference, identifying the suspect as Andrew Arrabaca.
“Mr Arrabaca came armed with bad intentions,” said James Barnacle, the assistant director in charge of the FBI New York Field Office in a televised press conference. He then listed numerous weapons in his possession.
The incident occurred at the bureau’s headquarters at ۲۶ Federal Plaza, a building that the Reuters news agency reported also houses an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office.
Video posted on social media by an independent journalist showed white smoke billowing from just outside the building, and a number of armed law enforcement personnel in uniform emerging quickly from a doorway.
A more detailed clip on CNN’s website appears to show the moment the device exploded, and a person on the ground surrounded by police officers or ICE personnel.
According to the New York news channel PIX۱۱, three people were injured, two of them requiring hospital treatment. The outlet cited officials who said a fire appeared to have been started by fireworks that were “loaded into a wagon bearing a sign that read ‘ICE out of our streets’”.
In a statement, the FBI said: “This morning, an individual deployed an incendiary device outside ۲۶ Federal Plaza. The individual has been taken into custody, and the FBI New York joint terrorism taskforce is investigating the incident.”
NBC New York reported that Arrabaca “may have emotional issues” – and that he had previously served in the US army and the national guard.
The top US House Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, who represents a New York district, praised the quick response of authorities.
“I am grateful to law enforcement for their swift actions to stop an attack at ۲۶ Federal Plaza this morning, for successfully apprehending the suspect and for keeping the people of New York City safe,” he said in a statement.
“Acts of terror and violence have no place in our city and will never be tolerated. The individual responsible for this must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Protests against ICE, and the Trump administration’s hardline approach to immigration, have proliferated in recent weeks and months as the number of deaths at the hands of federal immigration authorities has increased.
Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero were killed during separate encounters earlier in July with officers attempting to conduct traffic stops in Texas and Maine. And on ۱۳ July, Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, a ۴۵-year-old Venezuelan man, became the ۲۲nd person to die in ICE custody this year after he was found unresponsive at a detention center in Georgia.
The Trump administration had appeared to step back from its policy of hardline immigration enforcement after the shooting deaths of two unarmed US citizens – Alex Pretti and Renee Good – by federal agents in Minneapolis in January.
But the homeland security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, denied on Friday that traffic stops by ICE and border patrol agents would be suspended in response to the most recent fatal shootings. And he promised that a surge of immigration arrests would continue.
“We’re turning up the heat on the streets. We’re out there working harder than we ever have,” he said at a news conference.
