The trial against Brad Lander, a New York City Democrat, stemming from his arrest during an attempt to inspect rooms holding detained immigrants started on Wednesday in a Manhattan federal court
Lander was ticketed on a violation for allegedly blocking an elevator bank on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, the location of major immigration court located in Manhattan.
Lander, the former city comptroller now vying for Democratic incumbent Dan Goldman’s congressional district encompassing lower Manhattan and north-west Brooklyn, was taken into custody on 18 September 2025 at 26 Federal Plaza.
“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,” Ariel Cohen, a prosecutor, told magistrate judge, Henry Ricardo.
“He ignored multiple warnings to move and instead started chanting the phrase ‘We shall not be moved.’”
Michael Bass, one of Lander’s attorneys, insisted that his client “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.”
Lander, he said, went to the 10th floor to inspect ICE’s “makeshift” detention facility. “He was the New York City comptroller then and he was concerned for the safety of his constituents.”
Bass also admitted that the facts at issue seemed small – this was a trial about alleged elevator blocking – but that these proceedings portended to a deeper issue.
“Arrest is the bludgeon of suppression and this case is yet another example of the administration’s suppression of political dissent,” Bass said.
Lander, along with several other local electeds, went to this sprawling tower – which holds an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office – amid Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants.
As agents started arresting people at immigration court – which Lander’s legal team describes as a “stark reversal of a decades-long federal practice of largely refraining from conducting arrests at immigration courthouses” – the number of arrestees overtook capacity at processing and transfer facilities.
ICE directed its field offices to use their respective “hold rooms” to detain immigrants beyond the previous maximum length of 12 hours to three days, Lander’s attorney said in court documents. ICE officials also said that detained immigrants could be held still longer in “exceptional circumstances”.
While the people held in 26 Federal Plaza hold rooms were “rarely detained for more than one day” – with the January-April 2025 average being six hours – mean detention time ballooned to 103 hours by mid-June 2025, Lander’s team also claimed. Some immigrants detained in the 26 Federal Plaza hold rooms sued, claiming overcrowded and squalid conditions.
Manhattan federal court judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that the Department of Homeland Security and ICE had to improve the conditions. On 17 September, Kaplan sided with the plaintiffs’ request for 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 … .”
Lander and 10 other elected officials decided to review the 10th floor hold rooms “and ensure that ICE was following the order … and federal and state law”. The group was allowed inside 26 Federal Plaza after Lander told security officers that they were elected officials.
When they arrived at the 10th floor, an officer near the elevator bank, outside double doors leading to hold rooms, “immediately told the group they would not be permitted to enter”, Lander’s lawyer said in court papers. The officials tried to explain why they wanted to inspect the rooms, and Lander said: “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.”
They were not permitted to inspect the hold rooms, but an officer said that they could remain there as long as they didn’t bang on the doors. The group agreed to stop banging on the doors leading to the hold rooms and sat down.
They chanted and sang while continuing to request access to the hold rooms, Lander’s legal team said in court documents, and shared why they were there. When the last elected official in this group started to share what brought him to 26 Federal Plaza, an officer said: “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 … FPS officers began to arrest each of the seated elected officials” and issued tickets, Lander’s lawyer said in court papers. Lander’s ticket on a violation claimed that he “block[ed] entrances, foyers and corridors”.
Federal officials offered to drop the violation in October, but one of the conditions was that “not protest inside any federal building for a period of six months”. Lander refused.
