Former City Comptroller and Democrat congressional candidate Brad Lander was cleared of wrongdoing by a Manhattan magistrate judge Thursday in relation to his arrest at 26 Federal Plaza. The judge determined he was not guilty for blocking elevators and an elevator lobby in the building while demanding access to ICE holding cells.
Magistrate Judge Henry Ricardo delivered his verdict from the bench in Manhattan federal court, a day after hearing testimony from Lander and various federal officials at a bench trial about the Sept. 18 incident.
Lander, then city comptroller, and other elected officials turned up at 26 Federal Plaza during a broader protest action and demanded to inspect the conditions migrants were being detained in, sitting on the floor outside the doors to the ICE cells on the nonpublic 10th floor and chanting “we shall not be moved.”
“Mr. Lander was told that the behavior that crossed the line into unlawful conditions was banging on the door. He stopped doing that when he was told to stop doing that. He was further told that he could stay there, in the 10th floor elevator lobby, for as long as he liked, and he then proceeded to stay. He sat down on the floor, putting his back on the elevator floor within sight of [Federal Protective Service] officers and remained there for some 25 minutes while FPS officers were present in that lobby, which is not a very large space,” Ricardo said.
“Those FPS officers made no complaint whatsoever about Mr. Lander sitting on the floor of the elevator lobby.”
Lander, who’s been endorsed by Mayor Mamdani, is challenging Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman in the race for New York’s 10th congressional district.
A recent Emerson poll showed him beating the incumbent congressman by 34 points in the district encompassing Manhattan below 14th St. and northwest Brooklyn neighborhoods.
He chose to fight the ticket at a trial falling on the eve of the primary rather than accepting a plea deal, like 10 elected officials arrested alongside him, to bring attention to the Trump administration’s operations at the facility.
A judge in a separate case has halted arrests in the building after ICE admitted it relied on erroneous information to authorize them. In another, a judge mulling permanent restrictions on ICE’s operations in the building last year deemed the agency’s detention of asylum seekers inhumane. It was after the second of those rulings that Lander and the other officials turned up at the facility.
The Justice Department was required to prove Lander knowingly and unreasonably obstructed the usual use of elevators and an elevator lobby. The violation carried no jail time or meaningful form of punishment.
“My purpose was to inspect the 10th floor detention facilities along with other colleagues in order to call attention to concerns we had about human rights violations,” the ex-comptroller testified Wednesday.
“If they had said, ‘Could you move a foot over to let someone off the elevator?’ of course I would have moved to let somebody off the elevator.”
While describing the testimony as self-serving and worthy of scrutiny, Ricardo said he found it credible and noted that it was not impeached on cross-examination.
Saying he meant no offense to Lander, the judge remarked that in CCTV, “he seemed tired, and he seemed a bit resigned to the situation.” He said that Lander’s movements and mannerisms did not suggest purposeful action regarding the elevators.
“I find that up to that point — up to the point of sitting down in the elevator lobby with his back against the elevator door — Mr. Lander had complied with the instructions given,” Ricardo said, later adding that directions by agents were inconsistent and the scene “confusing and chaotic.”
“This was simply too short a timeframe for a reasonable person to take all this in and to process it,” the judge said.
This developing story will be updated.