![\"NYC](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/nyc-comptroller-brad-lander.jpg\")
\nNYC Comptroller Brad Lander
\nPhoto by Michael M. Santiago\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\nNYC Comptroller Brad Lander
\nPhoto by Michael M. Santiago\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
New York City<\/a> Comptroller Brad Lander says routine immigration hearings at 26 Federal Plaza have evolved into what he calls an “abduction trap,” alleging that masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement<\/a> agents are detaining immigrants immediately after they appear before judges.<\/p>\n In an opinion essay published by MSNBC, Lander wrote that the Manhattan<\/a> building, long home to immigration courts, “isn’t functioning as a courthouse. It’s functioning as an abduction trap. And as an inhumane de facto jail.” He said he has visited the facility “more than a dozen times” and has been arrested twice attempting to escort migrants or inspect holding cells.<\/p>\n According to Lander<\/a>, immigrants who arrive as ordered for asylum hearings receive new dates\u2014sometimes years in the future\u2014before being seized outside the courtroom. “Right outside the courtroom, ICE agents lurk in the hallways,” he wrote. “They cover their faces with masks to limit accountability. And they lay in wait to detain people as they leave their hearings.”<\/p>\n He said the arrests occur without warrants, identification, or explanation, adding, “It feels more like kidnapping than like the rule of law.”<\/p>\n Lander cited the case of Carlos Lopez Benitez, who attended a hearing on July 16 and received a follow-up date in 2029. “I witnessed masked ICE agents right outside the courtroom tear the 27-year-old from Paraguay out of his sister’s arms and abduct him,” he wrote. Lopez Benitez was later released after two weeks when advocates filed a habeas petition.<\/p>\n He said ICE agents “don’t care” when asylum seekers attempt to show their court documentation, and described witnessing agents detain the wrong individual before “violently dragging him into a stairwell.”<\/p>\n Lander said arrests have swept up “pregnant women. High school students. U.S. citizens. A 6-year-old,” claiming the surge has “increased dramatically through the spring and summer.” He accused agents of “shoving witnesses and ripping people out of the arms of their loved ones,” recounting a pregnant woman asking whether her detained husband would be killed.<\/p>\n The comptroller’s claims follow two high-profile arrests of his own at 26 Federal Plaza.<\/p>\n