NEW YORK — Two U.S. House representatives concerned about the conditions detained migrants are facing inside a lower Manhattan courthouse were denied access by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, a day after agents arrested city comptroller Brad Lander inside the same building.

“The question is, why can’t we go in? What are they hiding?,” Congressman Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., told reporters outside of 26 Federal Plaza, where asylum cases are heard. “How are they treating immigrants behind closed doors who have to sleep on floors for multiple nights? This is unacceptable.”

The showdown comes amid the Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up deportations.

In the courthouse lobby Wednesday, Reps. Goldman and Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., got into a verbal sparring match with ICE Deputy Field Director Bill Joyce, who said arrested migrants are sleeping on the floors and on benches on the building’s 10th floor.

“As Congress people we have an absolute right to inspect any federal facility, including a detention center. You have no right to say no to us. It’s a matter of law,” Rep. Nadler told Joyce, with a gaggle of press surrounding them.

“Well that’s not our understanding. I appreciate you guys coming, but our understanding is that your oversight responsibility of Section 527 does not include processing areas,” Joyce replied.

Joyce confirmed that arrestees sometimes spend two or more nights on the 10th floor, but insisted it is merely a “holding and processing facility,” deeming it off-limits to the lawmakers. He said the detainees are fed and have access to bathrooms.

Joyce also added that they are “rotating people in and out”, sometimes taking detainees to other holding facilities such as Nassau County jail, and then bringing them back to 26 Federal Plaza if they are ultimately flown someplace else.

U.S. Reps. Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velasquez were barred from the same facility on June 8th

Goldman told reporters he planned to go to Republican lawmakers on the Homeland Security Committee, asking them to make a joint request that DHS allow them on the 10th floor.

Goldman said they’d “start by escalating it up through the top,” adding that Joyce was “given orders from above him, not to allow us in.”

“We will continue to go up the chain,” he said.

Nadler said he’d consider a lawsuit if they continued to bar them from the floor.

The Department of Homeland security did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Rep. Nadler said he and Goldman sat in on two asylum hearings Wednesday morning, where they saw the government move to dismiss the migrants’ cases.

“Had the government dismissed the case and they walked out, they would have immediately been seized by ICE officers and deported from the country under expedited removal. But these two people had apparently been advised and they objected to dismissing the case, and so court dates were set for sometime in the future,” Nadler explained.

The tactic, which Rep. Goldman called “deceptive," has been utilized in city immigration courts in recent weeks, amid the Trump administration’s nationwide mass deportation crackdown.

ICE agents have often been seen lingering outside courtrooms, apparently listening for cases to be dismissed. When the migrants step foot outside the courtroom, federal agents, often wearing masks, surround and arrest them.

On Tuesday ICE agents arrested city comptroller Brad Lander, claiming that he had assaulted one of them as they moved in to arrest an immigrant leaving their court hearing.

Lander, a leading candidate in next week’s Democratic mayoral primary, said he “certainly did not assault an officer” and explained he was accompanying an immigrant named Edgardo when the agents arrested him.

“All I tried to do was hold Edgardo’s arm and asked the ICE agents, ‘Do you have a warrant?’ And they would not show me the warrant, and I said I’d let go of his arm as soon as they showed it to me, and they did not show it to me, and you saw what happened,” said Lander.

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