Brad Lander trial begins over immigration facility protest

Brad Lander went on trial Wednesday in Manhattan federal court over his arrest during a protest at 26 Federal Plaza, where he and other elected officials tried to inspect rooms holding detained immigrants after a judge ordered federal agencies to improve conditions there.

Lander, a New York City Democrat and former comptroller now running for Congress, has pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor violation tied to the Sept. 18, 2025, incident. He was arrested alongside 75 others, including nearly a dozen elected officials, at the downtown Manhattan building that houses an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, a major immigration court and the FBI’s New York field office.

“The crime is what ICE is doing, and we have pursued our case to trial asking for more information,” Lander said at a news conference outside the courthouse before proceedings began. “What’s most important is that we keep showing up and bearing witness.”

Prosecutors described the case in narrower terms. “Today’s trial is for the court to decide a narrow issue: whether on September 18 2025, Bradford Lander unreasonably obstructed the usual use of the elevators and the elevator lobby on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza,” prosecutor Ariel Cohen told Magistrate Judge Henry Ricardo, according to The Guardian. Cohen said Lander ignored multiple warnings to move and began chanting, “We shall not be moved.”

Michael Bass, one of Lander’s attorneys, denied that account. Lander “did not block an elevator on the 10th floor of 26 federal plaza. He did not block an elevator lobby. He did not block an elevator bank,” Bass said. He said Lander went to inspect ICE’s “makeshift” detention facility because, as comptroller, “he was concerned for the safety of his constituents.”

Bass argued that the case was about more than an alleged elevator obstruction. “Arrest is the bludgeon of suppression and this case is yet another example of the administration’s suppression of political dissent,” he said.

The attempted inspection followed a ruling by Manhattan federal Judge Lewis Kaplan requiring the Department of Homeland Security and ICE to improve conditions for immigrants held at 26 Federal Plaza. The Guardian reported that immigrants detained in the building’s hold rooms had sued, alleging overcrowded and squalid conditions. Kaplan sided with the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction on Sept. 17, writing that the order was needed “to protect those swept up in the administration’s program and sent to the 26 Fed Hold Rooms from unconstitutional and inhumane treatment ….”

Lander’s legal team said in court papers that federal immigration arrests at immigration court had increased and that ICE had directed field offices to use hold rooms to detain immigrants beyond the previous 12-hour maximum, up to three days and longer in “exceptional circumstances.” The team claimed average detention time at the 26 Federal Plaza hold rooms rose from six hours between January and April 2025 to 103 hours by mid-June.

According to Lander’s lawyers, the group was allowed into the building after identifying themselves as elected officials but was stopped near the 10th-floor elevator bank outside double doors leading to the hold rooms. Lander told officers that a federal judge had found conditions behind the door to be unlawful, cruel and inhumane, and said the officials had a responsibility to see them for themselves.

The group was not allowed inside. They sat down, chanted and sang while requesting access, the legal team said. An officer later warned that they would be arrested if they refused to leave, and officers began making arrests shortly afterward.

Federal officials offered in October to drop the violation, The Guardian reported, but only if Lander agreed not to protest inside any federal building for six months. He refused and requested a trial. Lander said Wednesday that his team would call three witnesses.

Lander, who is seeking to represent New York’s 10th Congressional District, was also taken into custody last June during a separate incident at a federal courthouse in New York while he was running for mayor. DHS said then that he was accused of “assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.” Lander denied assaulting law enforcement after his release.