NEW YORK — Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander is scheduled to stand trial Wednesday in a Manhattan federal court on charges stemming from his arrest last September after he and 10 other elected officials attempted to inspect rooms holding detained immigrants at 26 Federal Plaza, a major immigration court facility.
Lander, a Democrat who is running in a contested primary for U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman’s congressional seat covering lower Manhattan and northwest Brooklyn, was arrested on Sept. 18, 2025, after he and the group refused to leave the building’s 10th floor, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement maintains holding rooms.
The incident occurred during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, when ICE field offices began directing hold rooms to detain immigrants for up to three days, a shift Lander’s legal team described in court documents as a “stark reversal of a decades-long federal practice of largely refraining from conducting arrests at immigration courthouses.”
According to court filings from Lander’s attorney, the average detention time for immigrants held at 26 Federal Plaza was six hours between January and April 2025. By mid-June 2025, the average had ballooned to 103 hours. Some immigrants who had been held in the facility sued, alleging overcrowded and squalid conditions.
Manhattan federal court Judge Lewis Kaplan sided with the plaintiffs on Sept. 17, 2025, ruling that the Department of Homeland Security and ICE had to improve conditions. Kaplan granted a preliminary injunction “to protect those swept up in the administration’s program and sent to the 26 Fed Hold Rooms from unconstitutional and inhumane treatment,” according to court records.
The following day, Lander and the other elected officials went to 26 Federal Plaza to inspect the hold rooms. Lander told security officers they were elected officials, and the group was allowed inside the building, his lawyer said.
When the group arrived at the 10th floor elevator bank, an officer outside double doors leading to the hold rooms “immediately told the group they would not be permitted to enter,” according to the court documents. Lander responded: “A federal judge indicated that the conditions that are behind that door are a violation of federal law and are cruel and inhumane and we read that decision, and we believe it is our responsibility to come down here and see for ourselves.”
The officer told the group they could remain as long as they did not bang on the doors to the hold rooms. According to Lander’s legal team, the officials agreed to stop banging and sat down, chanting and singing while continuing to request access. After the last elected official in the group began speaking, an officer told them: “If you refuse to leave under federal regulation, you’re going to be arrested. You are violating the law right now. You are protesting illegally.”
“Only 33 seconds after the new warning was given,” federal officers began arresting the seated officials, Lander’s lawyer said. Lander was issued a ticket citing him for having “block[ed] entrances, foyers and corridors.”
In October 2025, federal prosecutors offered to drop the violation against Lander on the condition that he “not protest inside any federal building for a period of six months,” according to his attorney. Lander refused the condition.