NEW YORK — A federal immigration court in Lower Manhattan that has come to embody the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown is now the central front in one of New York City’s most closely watched congressional primaries. The race in the solidly blue district pits incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman, a former Trump impeachment prosecutor, against progressive challenger Brad Lander, the former city comptroller — and their clashing approaches to the courthouse at 26 Federal Plaza expose a broader Democratic tension over how to resist the administration’s immigration agenda.
Goldman has leaned on the tools of his office. He sued the administration to open immigration detention facilities to members of Congress, conducts regular oversight visits inside the building, and has turned his district office across the street into what his campaign calls a triage center that connects immigrants with advocacy groups and legal services. His campaign said the effort has helped more than 30 people secure release from federal custody. After a recent tour of the detention center, Goldman credited his oversight work for improvements in holding conditions. “What you see from our multipronged approach is the way that I push back, which is not performative, but it is substantive,” Goldman told the Associated Press.
Lander has positioned himself as a protester and court observer. He attends immigration hearings, attempts to accompany migrants past masked federal agents in the hallway, and has twice been arrested at the building. His first arrest, last year while still running for mayor, came when he linked arms with someone authorities sought to detain. The second, a few months later, followed a larger protest and resulted in a misdemeanor obstruction charge. Rather than accept a dismissal that would have resolved the case after six months, Lander opted for a trial, which is scheduled to begin just before the primary. Lander said he wants the proceeding to force the release of information about federal enforcement operations at the building during a period he argues Goldman’s oversight didn’t cover.
Each candidate has sought to frame the other’s strategy as hollow. Goldman called Lander’s efforts performative and questioned the logic of the trial. “I don’t understand why someone would reject a dismissal of a case so that he can have a public trial, ostensibly to ask for information that I could provide him whenever he wanted because I have the answers from doing my oversight,” Goldman said. Lander, in turn, characterized Goldman’s oversight as “strongly worded letters.” “My oversight function is: Show up with hundreds of your neighbors and bear witness and accompany people and demand access and stay until they give it to you or they arrest you,” Lander said.
The split played out this week when Lander returned to observe hearings. After his team learned that masked agents were waiting outside a courtroom across the street, he hurried over and found them lingering in the waiting area. “The challenge is trying to figure out who they’re going to arrest,” Lander said, emerging from the hearing. The agents eventually left without explanation. Lander later went back across the street to film a campaign video in front of 26 Federal Plaza.
With the June primary widely expected to determine the general election winner in the heavily Democratic district, the confrontation over the courthouse has become a defining question for voters: which model of resistance — institutional leverage or direct confrontation — offers the more effective answer to a deportation campaign that has made the building’s hallway arrests an unignorable feature of daily life in Lower Manhattan.