Trial underway for ex-NYC comptroller Brad Lander after immigration court arrest

Brad Lander and 10 other elected officials were arrested by federal agents at ICE facility last September

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 “exceptiona