NEW YORK — The Republican-led U.S. House Judiciary Committee and its immigration subcommittee released an interim staff report on Monday, October 26, alleging that New York City's sanctuary policies have had dangerous public-safety consequences and that the city's five elected district attorneys treat noncitizen defendants differently from U.S. citizens in criminal cases.
Source: House Judiciary Committee Republicans
According to the committee, in roughly the past year alone the New York City Police Department received nearly 10,000 ICE detainers and honored zero of them because of state and local sanctuary policies. From July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2026, the committee says, the NYPD received 20,255 detainers and did not honor a single one, while the New York City Department of Correction received nearly 3,000 detainers in the same period and likewise honored none.
Source: House Judiciary Committee Republicans
What the report alleges about the borough prosecutors
The report names District Attorneys Melinda Katz (Queens), Darcel Clark (Bronx), Alvin Bragg (Manhattan), Eric Gonzalez (Brooklyn) and Michael McMahon (Staten Island), and alleges that prosecutors in their offices are directed to give preferential treatment to foreign nationals so that defendants can avoid deportation. In the Bronx, the committee alleges, Clark trains prosecutors to conceal certain facts from the record of conviction and to pursue alternative charges — including, the committee says, in cases involving aggravated felonies, crimes against children, domestic violence, strangulation and firearms offences — and it alleges her office encourages prosecutors to use what it calls legally impossible charges. These are the committee's allegations; they are not court findings.
Source: House Judiciary Committee Republicans
In Queens, the committee says, Katz urges prosecutors to “exercise extreme caution” in resolving cases involving foreign nationals and advises them not to get “caught up in the label” of felonies or misdemeanours. Reporting on the report, based on the New York Post's account, adds that a 2019 Bronx guide to immigration-conscious plea bargaining told prosecutors to offer charges that do not include a child's age as an element in some cases and to keep firearm references out of the record of conviction in weapons cases, and that Manhattan's Bragg issued a 2022 memo directing staff to seek dispositions that avoid immigration triggers for misdemeanours and certain felonies.
Source: New York Post reporting, via Bay Area Daily News
The committee also pointed to wider state and city measures, saying New York officials recently enacted the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, which it says bars local law enforcement from housing noncitizens for ICE, transferring detainees to ICE custody in an orderly way, or entering 287(g) cooperation agreements, and that Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James announced a statewide Office of Immigrant Trust. It said Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order earlier this year barring ICE from entering New York City schools, shelters and hospitals without a judicial warrant. The Department of Homeland Security amplified the report on X on October 26.
Source: House Judiciary Committee Republicans
New York City and the wider metro area, including New Jersey suburbs such as Edison and Jersey City, are home to one of the largest Punjabi and South Asian communities in the United States. How city prosecutors handle cases involving noncitizens — and whether ICE detainers are honored — directly affects immigrant families across the region. The report is an interim staff report from a Republican-led committee, and its claims are presented here as allegations, not established findings.
The report, titled “New York City: The Dangerous Consequences of Sanctuary Policies,” was released a week before the November 3 midterm elections, as immigration enforcement remains a central national argument. A summary of the report's findings was also published by Wisevoter on October 27.