Brad Lander is set to stand trial in a federal courthouse in the city starting Wednesday over an arrest in September that occurred while the then-New York City comptroller was protesting conditions at an immigration holding facility.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.He was arrested alongside 75 others, including nearly a dozen other elected officials, at 26 Federal Plaza in downtown Manhattan, as they attempted to inspect rooms holding detained immigrants in the building, which is also home to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office and the FBI’s New York field office.
The inspections came after a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that the Department of Homeland Security and ICE had to improve conditions for immigrants being held in the city.Lander pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges in December related to the intended inspection.
“I pleaded not guilty because we were not guilty of any crime,” he said at a news conference ahead of the start of his trial Wednesday.“The crime is what Ice is doing, and we have pursued our case to trial asking for more information.”Lander requested to proceed to trial over the charges, saying in a November statement that he did so because “I believe the crime is not what I did, but what is happening on the other side of the tenth-floor door.”“ICE agents are abducting our neighbors and trying to hide what is happening from the public, and we’re not letting up,” he said.
“By requesting to proceed to trial, in the same way ICE and DHS can ask me what I was doing in the hallway, I will have the opportunity to question the officers about what they were doing on the tenth floor in that detention facility on that day.”At the Wednesday morning press conference outside the courthouse, Lander said his team will call three witnesses in relation to their case.“It is important to keep standing up and fighting back,” Lander said.“That’s...