Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller and a Democratic candidate for mayor, was released from federal custody Tuesday afternoon after being arrested by agents at a courthouse in lower Manhattan.

Lander was escorting an immigrant man he called Edgardo outside immigration court when the man was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and “stripped of his due-process rights.” When he moved to protect the man, Lander was arrested.

“I will be fine, but Edgardo is not going to be fine and the rule of law is not fine and our constitutional democracy is not fine,” he said.

Lander was accompanied by Governor Kathy Hochul, one of the many Democratic officials who gathered in his support. Though the federal government initially touted its arrest of Lander and its intent to charge him with assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer, Hochul told reporters that those charges had been dropped. “While that is a positive outcome in a very high-profile case, we’re also concerned about those that’re walking out of this courthouse taken away from their families. They don’t have the attention; they don’t have the lawyers,” she said.

Lander, a progressive, was on his third visit to the federal court to escort immigrants. In video taken by NY1 reporter Courtney Gross, he was seen in a hallway accompanying a man whose case was

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