The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee and its Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement released an interim staff report on Tuesday titled “New York City: The Dangerous Consequences of Sanctuary Policies.” The report alleges that New York City's sanctuary policies have harmed public safety and that the chief prosecutors of the city's five boroughs treat noncitizen defendants differently from U.S. citizens in criminal cases.
Source: House Judiciary Committee
According to the committee, in roughly the past year alone the New York City Police Department (NYPD) received nearly 10,000 immigration detainers — federal requests to hold a noncitizen briefly so Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can take custody — and honoured zero. From July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2026, the committee says, the NYPD received 20,255 detainers and did not honour a single one, while the city's Department of Correction received nearly 3,000 detainers in the same period and honoured none.
Source: House Judiciary Committee
The report names District Attorneys Melinda Katz of Queens, Darcel Clark of the Bronx, Alvin Bragg of Manhattan, Eric Gonzalez of Brooklyn and Michael McMahon of Staten Island, and alleges their offices give preferential treatment to foreign nationals so they can avoid deportation. These are the committee's allegations; the report is an interim staff report from the Republican-led committee, not a court finding.
Source: Fox News via The NY Ledger
For the Bronx, the committee alleges DA Clark's office trains prosecutors to conceal certain facts from the record of conviction and to pursue alternative charges, including in cases involving aggravated felonies, crimes against children, domestic violence and firearms offences. Fox News, reporting on the report, cited the example of defendants pleading guilty to “attempted reckless assault,” which the committee called a legally impossible charge; New York courts nevertheless allow guilty pleas to such hypothetical offences, and the state's Court of Appeals upheld the concept this year, Fox reported. State data obtained by the Immigrant Defense Project showed 289 convictions for attempted reckless assault across New York City from 2015 through 2025, including 50 in the Bronx.
Source: Fox News via The NY Ledger
For Queens, the committee says DA Katz urges prosecutors to “exercise extreme caution” in cases involving foreign nationals, and Fox reported the committee cited a May 2026 email in which a Queens prosecutor told an NYPD detective the office had “basically made a [plea] deal which is 'immigration safe'.” For Manhattan, the report cited a 2022 memo from DA Bragg telling prosecutors to seek dispositions avoiding immigration consequences; Bragg's office told the committee that January 2022 policy was “outdated” and had been updated to give prosecutors discretion in individual cases, Fox reported. The five DA offices and the mayor's office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Source: Fox News via The NY Ledger
The committee also criticised New York's recently enacted Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, which it says bars local law enforcement from housing people for ICE, transferring criminal detainees to ICE custody and entering 287(g) cooperation agreements, as well as a statewide Office of Immigrant Trust announced by Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James, and an executive order by Mayor Zohran Mamdani barring ICE from entering city schools, shelters and hospitals without a judicial warrant. The report lands as House Republicans push legislation to stop state and local governments from restricting cooperation with federal immigration authorities; a committee-backed bill, the Shut Down Sanctuary Policies Act, has stalled in the House, Fox reported.