Brad Lander is headed to trial in May, charged with obstructing the use of a foyer at 26 Federal Plaza in a protest action over conditions in hidden holding cells where migrants are detained, a Manhattan judge ruled Thursday.
Manhattan Magistrate Judge Henry Ricardo put Lander’s trial on the calendar at the first pretrial hearing for the former city comptroller and current congressional candidate since he pleaded not guilty to the federal violation in December. Lander, 56, rejected a deal from prosecutors that would have ultimately wiped the slate clean, choosing to fight the violation at trial in what he says is a bid to elicit evidence about what’s occurring in secretive areas of the scandal-plagued facility.
The feds are slated to provide Lander’s legal team with Department of Homeland Security audio recordings surrounding his arrest next week, prosecutors said Wednesday. They are fighting more substantive discovery demands from the defense, requests that Ricardo has yet to rule on. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ariel Cohen said he expects the prosecution’s case to take half a day to present.
Lander was arrested on Sept. 18 alongside nine other state and local lawmakers during an act of civil disobedience on the building’s nonpublic 10th floor, where they sat by an entrance to the holding cells and demanded to inspect them. The other elected officials arrested took the nonprosecution deal.
According to a lawsuit also playing out in Manhattan, hundreds of migrants — the vast majority of whom have not been accused of committing any crimes, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data — have been detained on the 10th floor in deplorable conditions pending their transfer to detention facilities across the U.S.
Judge Lewis Kaplan, presiding over that suit, in August ordered federal immigration authorities to address the inhumane conditions and clean up the 10th floor. The agency apparently sought a workaround by detaining people on another floor, which was not subject to the order, according to a deposition by ICE’s deputy New York chief, William Joyce, that was brought to the judge’s attention earlier this week.
After deciding to fight his case at trial, Lander in December announced he would challenge Rep. Dan Goldman in the Democratic primary for New York’s 10th Congressional District, which encompasses Manhattan below 14th St. and several neighborhoods in west Brooklyn, including Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, Gowanus and Sunset Park.
The dueling Democrats have made fighting ICE and the terror it’s inflicted on immigrant New Yorkers central to their campaigns. Shortly before Lander appeared in court Thursday, Goldman turned up across the street for an unannounced inspection at 26 Federal Plaza, The CITY reported.