A Judge Clears Brad Lander Over the ICE-Court Protest. The Charge Was Blocking an Elevator.

On June 11, 2026, a federal magistrate judge found former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander (D)not guilty of a petty federal misdemeanor — obstructing an elevator bank inside 26 Federal Plaza — that stemmed from a September 2025 anti-ICE protest at the building that houses Manhattan’s immigration court. “I find the defendant not guilty,” the judge said after a one-day bench trial.

The acquittal closes one of two separate confrontations Lander had at the same address. The headline-grabbing one came earlier: in June 2025, while running for mayor, Lander was detained by masked federal agents after he linked arms with an immigrant the agents were trying to take into custody. The Department of Homeland Security publicly accused him of “assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer” — then held him four hours and released him with no charges ever filed.

The case that actually went to trial was the smaller one: a September 18, 2025 protest, when Lander and ten other elected officials sat in front of an elevator lobby demanding to inspect ICE holding cells. The verdict landed less than two weeks before the June 23 Democratic primary for New York’s 10th Congressional District, where Lander — backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — is trying to unseat Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY).

• Not guilty — verdict from U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry J. Ricardo after a one-day bench trial; the judge ruled the government failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt · Source: PBS NewsHour / AP, CBS New York
• Sept. 18, 2025 — the protest behind the trial: Lander and 10 other elected officials sat at an elevator bank demanding to inspect ICE holding cells on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza · Source: Washington Examiner, Courthouse News
• 0 charges — ever filed over the earlier June 17, 2025 arrest, when DHS accused Lander of 'assaulting law enforcement' but released him after roughly four hours · Source: The City Reporter, CNN
• June 23 — Democratic primary for NY's 10th District — Lander, backed by Mayor Mamdani and Sen. Sanders, is challenging Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) · Source: Fortune

The verdict came down on a Thursday morning in a Lower Manhattan federal courtroom, the day after a swift, one-day bench trial. U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry J. Ricardo told the courtroom plainly: “I find the defendant not guilty.” The charge was a federal petty offense — unreasonably obstructing the usual use of an elevator lobby on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, where federal prosecutors said Brad Lander (D) had sat in front of the elevators for 20 to 25 minutes during a September 2025 protest.

Ricardo found the government had failed to show that Lander intended to obstruct the elevators or was uncooperative, noting that members of federal law enforcement had given the protesters conflicting instructions. The defense had argued the demonstrators sat on the floor for more than 20 minutes before any officer told them to move — and that when officers finally did, the warnings lasted only about 30 seconds. “On these facts,” the judge concluded, “the government has failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Keep Reading

Society · Alien Crime

Two Utah Court Clerks Charged with Helping Illegal Aliens Evade ICE

Read →

The case that went to trial was not the dramatic arm-linking footage that went viral in 2025. It traced to September 18, 2025, when Lander — by then the city’s outgoing comptroller — joined roughly ten other New York elected officials at 26 Federal Plaza to demand access to the ICE holding cells on the 10th floor, where detainees were being held amid a wave of immigration arrests at the building. They sat at the elevator bank; eleven elected officials were arrested, and Lander was cited for the obstruction violation.

Weeks after that arrest, prosecutors offered Lander a deal that would have dismissed the misdemeanor charge in six months. He rejected it and took the case to trial. On the stand, Lander testified that nobody told him to step away from the elevator or said he was obstructing it before his arrest — the factual core the judge would later credit. Afterward, Lander said the experience was unexpectedly moving: “when you’re sitting there, it really is moving to feel like it matters what happens.”

“All we want at 26 Federal Plaza is for everybody facing removal proceedings by our government to have the same access to the rule of law as I had in this trial.”

Brad Lander (D), former NYC Comptroller · after his acquittal, June 11, 2026

To understand why Lander’s name became a national flashpoint, you have to go back three months earlier, to June 17, 2025 — a separate incident at the same address. Lander, then the sitting NYC Comptroller and a candidate in the Democratic mayoral primary, was at 26 Federal Plaza to observe immigration hearings. As masked agents moved to detain a man named Edgardo whose case had just been dismissed, Lander linked arms with him and repeatedly asked the agents to produce a judicial warrant. Video showed him pinned against a wall and handcuffed.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin announced on social media that Lander had been “arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer,” adding that “no one is above the law.” But Lander was held for roughly four hours — with Gov. Kathy Hochul (D)coming to the building to intervene — and then released. No charges were ever filed. The video, by multiple accounts, did not show Lander assaulting anyone. That June arrest, not the September citation, is what catapulted Lander into the national immigration debate.

Keep Reading

Society · Crime & Accountability

Drunk Driver Pleads Guilty in Crash That Killed Long Island Officer Patricia Espinosa.

Read →

The acquittal arrived with unmistakable political weight. Lander, who served as the city’s 45th comptroller from 2022 to 2025, finished third in the June 2025 Democratic mayoral primary — but his cross-endorsement of Zohran Mamdani (D) under ranked-choice voting helped propel Mamdani to the nomination and, ultimately, to City Hall. Lander then pivoted to a congressional run, challenging Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY)— the Levi Strauss heir seeking a third term — in the 10th District.

That primary is June 23. A not-guilty verdict on an ICE-protest charge, delivered by a federal judge twelve days out, is precisely the kind of moment a progressive challenger campaigns on — and Lander, endorsed by Mamdani, Sanders, and Warren, has built his pitch around his willingness to physically place himself between federal agents and immigrants. To his critics, that same willingness is the problem: DHS framed his 2025 conduct as elected officials “undermin[ing] law enforcement safety to get a viral moment.” The verdict resolves the legal question; it does not resolve that political one.

It is worth being precise about what the acquittal means. Ricardo did not rule on whether disrupting an ICE facility is acceptable, or whether elected officials should be inserting themselves into federal immigration enforcement. He ruled on a narrow evidentiary question: whether the government proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Lander intentionally obstructed the elevators after being lawfully ordered to clear them. On the record — conflicting agent instructions, a 20-minute sit with no order to move, a 30-second warning — the judge found it had not.

That is the system working as designed: a defendant exercised his right to a trial, the government bore the burden of proof, and a judge held the prosecution to it. Lander himself framed the verdict that way — arguing that the due process he received is exactly what the immigrants moving through 26 Federal Plaza often do not get. Whether one agrees with his protest or not, an acquittal on a thin obstruction charge is a fact, and a presumption of innocence vindicated is the rule, not the exception, of how these cases are supposed to end.

For Lander, the immediate horizon is the June 23 primary, where the verdict becomes a closing argument as much as a legal outcome. For 26 Federal Plaza, the underlying conflict is unchanged: the building remains a flashpoint where immigration arrests, courthouse detentions, and elected-official protests keep colliding, and where the broader fight — over judicial warrants, ICE access, and the line between observation and obstruction — is far from settled. More such cases, and more such arrests, are likely.

The verifiable record, as of publication, is narrow and clean: the September obstruction charge ended in an acquittal; the June 2025 arrest produced no charges at all; and the politician at the center of both is now days from a congressional election that may turn, in part, on the very confrontations that put him in a federal courtroom. We will update this page as the primary result — or any new filing — firms up the facts.

More From Civic Intelligence

Society · Crime & Accountability

A Rock to a Federal Officer's Face Cost a Portland Protester 30 Months.

Robert Jacob Hoopes, 25, was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for throwing a large rock into…

Society · Crime & Accountability

A Knicks Win, a Pile of Chairs, and a Bloodied Five Guys Worker. No Arrests.

Around 3 a.m. on June 11, 2026, a mob beat a 24-year-old Five Guys employee with chairs on West 42nd…

Last updated June 12, 2026