The woman who climbed the base of the Statue of Liberty on Wednesday is in federal custody and has been identified as a Congolese national.
Therese Patricia Okoumou, 44, who immigrated to the United States from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and lives in Staten Island, was taken into federal custody Wednesday night for allegedly breaking a federal regulation prohibiting people from unfurling banners on the monument, the New York Post reported.
Okoumou allegedly engaged in a three-hour standoff with authorities before officers escorted her down from the Statue of Liberty. Authorities arrested six people participating in the demonstration.
The left-wing activist group Rise and Resist NYC, which organized a protest near the statue earlier on Wednesday to abolish the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, said she unfurled a large banner with the words “ABOLISH ICE” near the statue’s pedestal.
Members of the group initially distanced themselves from her but admitted later she had been a part of the activist group. The group claims none of its members had been aware she would scale the base of the statue.
Wednesday’s arrest is not Okoumou’s first run-in with the law.
In 2017, she was arrested and charged with allegedly obstructing governmental administration, trespassing, and unlawful assembly for protesting outside a Department of Labor building in downtown Manhattan and refusing to obey police commands.
In 2011, the New York City Department of Sanitation hit her with $4,500 in fines for illegally posting flyers on Manhattan’s utility poles, advertising her services as a personal trainer.