Ex-NYC comptroller Brad Lander to stand trial after arrest at immigration court

Brad Lander is arrested inside lower Manhattan’s federal building after demanding access to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) holding area on the building’s 10th floor on 18 September 2025. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Brad Lander is arrested inside lower Manhattan’s federal building after demanding access to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) holding area on the building’s 10th floor on 18 September 2025. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images Ex-NYC comptroller Brad Lander to stand trial after arrest at immigration court Brad Lander and 10 other elected officials were arrested by federal agents at ICE facility last September New York City Democrat Brad Lander , the former city comptroller, is scheduled to stand trial Wednesday in a New York City federal court stemming from his arrest during an attempt to inspect rooms holding detained immigrants. Lander, who is 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, a major immigration court located in Manhattan. 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