NEW YORK — The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, that New York City police released Alpha Bah, a national of Guinea in West Africa, from custody in Queens even though US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had lodged a detainer asking to take him into federal custody — and that Bah remains at large. The statement, issued from Washington, is the federal government's account of the case; Fox News Digital reported the same day that a manhunt is now under way because officers who could have collected Bah inside a booking facility must instead find him on the streets.

Source: US Department of Homeland Security statement, October 28, 2026

According to DHS, Bah was arrested by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) on October 7, 2026, and charged with aggravated assault on a police officer with a deadly weapon, resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration, and intent to obtain transportation without paying — the last charge is the fare-evasion offence familiar to every New York subway and bus rider. These are allegations set out in a DHS press statement, not findings of a court: Bah is presumed innocent of the criminal charges unless and until he is convicted, and DHS did not publish the underlying arrest report or say in its statement exactly where in Queens the alleged assault on the officer took place.

October 7: the arrest, the detainer and the release

DHS said ICE lodged its detainer with Queens Central Booking on October 7, the same day as the arrest. A detainer is the written request ICE sends to a jail or booking facility asking it to notify ICE before releasing a person and, in many cases, to hold that person briefly so federal officers can take custody inside the facility rather than in public. DHS said the NYPD did not honour the detainer and released Bah from jail without notifying ICE. The department did not give the date or hour of the release in its statement. Fox News Digital, which reported the case first on Wednesday afternoon, said DHS sent repeated requests for federal officials to detain Bah and that ICE officers are now tasked with tracking him down.

The Bah case was released by DHS as part of a much larger attack on New York's detainer record. Citing what it called the latest ICE data, the department said that from January 20, 2025, to October 8, 2026, a total of 16,070 detainers were not honoured by the state of New York, and that those detainers were associated with 52,503 total criminal charges and convictions — including, in DHS's breakdown, 131 homicides, 132 kidnappings, 1,017 sexual offences, 1,561 DUIs, 1,631 burglaries, 1,776 robberies, 2,198 weapons offences, 4,324 dangerous-drugs charges and 9,502 assaults. Those are the department's own figures, presented by DHS as charges and convictions combined; they are attributed here to DHS and ICE, and New York officials have disputed the federal framing of detainer statistics in the past.

Two earlier arrests, two earlier releases

DHS said Bah had been arrested by the NYPD twice before October. On June 15, 2026, he was arrested and charged with intent to obtain transportation without paying; ICE lodged a detainer with Manhattan Central Booking, but, according to DHS, the NYPD refused to honour it and released him. More than a year earlier, on January 5, 2025, he was arrested and charged with criminal trespass and was released before ICE could lodge a detainer, the department said. DHS also said Bah entered the United States illegally through Arizona in November 2023, was arrested by the US Border Patrol, and was then released into the country by the Biden administration — the entry history is likewise DHS's account, published in its statement.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin used the case to attack New York's governor and mayor directly. "This illegal alien from Guinea was arrested for assaulting a police officer with a deadly weapon. Despite these violent charges, New York City sanctuary politicians refused to honor ICE's detainer and RELEASED him back onto the streets, and he remains at large," Mullin said in the statement. "This is the vision of sanctuary politicians in a nutshell: the open-border policies of the Biden Administration let this criminal into our country, and then sanctuary politicians in New York released him after arresting him without notifying ICE. DHS is calling on Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani to knock it off with these evil sanctuary policies before another American gets hurt, or worse." The capitalisation is DHS's own, from its written statement.

The wider New York policy fight behind one release

DHS framed the Bah release inside a year of escalating conflict over immigration cooperation in New York. In its account, Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order that the department says turned New York City into a shield for criminal non-citizens; in December 2025, then-Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons wrote to New York Attorney General Letitia James and the attorneys general of California and Illinois putting them on notice over detainers; and Governor Kathy Hochul proposed and then signed, in May 2026, legislation barring local police departments from partnering with ICE, which DHS said took effect on August 25, 2026. Each of those claims comes from the DHS statement and is attributed to it. In its initial reporting on Wednesday, Fox News noted that the offices of Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Bah case.

For readers in Queens — home to one of the largest Punjabi and South Asian communities in the United States, and to hundreds of thousands of daily subway and bus riders — the case lands on two live nerves at once: fare enforcement on public transit, which is where two of Bah's three listed arrests began, and the question of who is told what when a person charged with a violent offence walks out of a city booking facility. What happens next is practical, not rhetorical: ICE officers must locate a man whose address the federal government has not published, and if he is apprehended he would face the outstanding Queens charges in court, where he is presumed innocent, alongside any immigration proceedings. DHS has not announced any reward or tip line specific to Bah, and the NYPD had not published its own account of the October 7 arrest and release in the reporting available on Wednesday night.