An NYPD officer violated New York sanctuary city laws limiting the department’s assistance to federal immigration agencies by accepting a request from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to flag individuals facing deportation, a new Department of Investigation (DOI) report charges.
The officer set the alerts, but ultimately kept that information within the NYPD and did not share it with Homeland Security, according to the report. But the officer was removed from a federal task force because he did not notify his supervisor of the request to provide information to the feds.
In the report, released Wednesday, DOI revealed it looked at five interactions between the NYPD and agencies, including Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, that raised questions about whether the department had broken New York City laws that prohibit the NYPD from participating in civil immigration enforcement with limited exceptions.
While ultimately the report found only one one instance of a sanctuary city violation, it revealed new details about some incidents that THE CITY had previously reported on, highlighting the gray areas in the law — particularly in cases where NYPD officers work closely alongside federal agencies that have been deputized to focus on immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump.
The investigative agency determined that in four of the incidents, the department did not break the rules, but that in all the incidents the NYPD “does not fully comply with documentation and reporting requirements” regarding interactions with their federal counterparts.
Local sanctuary laws restrict city government cooperation on immigration enforcement, with some specified exceptions. The DOI’s probe was prompted by a June request from the City Council, which cited THE CITY’s reporting on incidents in which the NYPD interacted with federal authorities.
DOI made seven recommendations advising NYPD to tighten up its reporting and documentation protocols. The NYPD accepted all seven.
“As the report demonstrates, the NYPD has worked diligently to comply with New York’s sanctuary city laws,” said Brad Weekes, an NYPD spokesperson. “We appreciate DOI’s comprehensive report and have accepted all their recommendations to make our policies even stronger.”
The DOI’s probe was prompted by a request from the City Council in June. In a joint statement from Councilmember Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) and Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens), the two said the investigation “revealed gaps in NYPD’s compliance with our city’s laws that must be addressed.”
Landed in El Salvador
One of the incidents probed by the DOI involved Merwil Gutiérrez Flores, a 19-year-old asylum-seeker who lived in the Bronx, and whose dealings with law enforcement were reported by THE CITY.
In February, NYPD officers who were part of a Safe Streets Task Force, comprised of members of the NYPD and FBI, arrested the teen. While he was still in NYPD custody, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark decided not to prosecute him on weapons charges. But instead of releasing Gutiérrez Flores, the NYPD transferred him to the custody of the FBI, which within an hour transferred him to ICE.
Once in ICE custody, Gutierrez Flores was among the Venezuelans accused of gang affiliation with little evidence, and mostly with no criminal history, shipped off by the administration of President Donald Trump to the notorious El Salvadoran prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT. Gutiérrez Flores, whose detention was first reported by Documented, languished there for 125 days before he was released through a deal with Venezuelan authorities in July.
Wilmer Gutierrez, 40, from Venezuela displays a photo of himself with his son Merwil Gutierrez, 19, on the Brooklyn Bridge from the home that they shared in Bronx, NY, on April 4, 2025. Credit: Anna Watts for Documented
The DOI investigation found that the department did not violate NYPD policies or local laws because the FBI told the police department that federal prosecutors were considering bringing charges.
Still, the report notes that “the FBI’s decision to transfer Mr. Gutiérrez Flores to ICE within an hour of his release from NYPD custody highlights an important consideration for the NYPD’s policies — even federal agencies not traditionally thought to enforce civil immigration laws, like the FBI, may assist in civil immigration enforcement.”
In this case, the NYPD was alerted by ICE at about 7 p.m. on Feb. 25 that the agency was seeking Gutiérrez Flores on a civil immigration detainer. That request was properly denied by the NYPD, according to DOI, because it wasn’t accompanied by a required judicial warrant.
It was three hours later, around 10 p.m., that the Bronx district attorney’s office formally notified the department that it would be declining to prosecute Gutiérrez Flores. The report says a lieutenant in the joint task force subsequently communicated with a counterpart at the FBI who said the agency was considering charging him, and that by 10:06 p.m., Gutiérrez Flores was in FBI custody.
Among other incidents inspected by DOI was another reported on by THE CITY, in which an NYPD document of a sealed summons record made its way into the ICE deportation case against a young Palestinian woman named Leqaa Kordia, which was first reported by the Associated Press.
Kordia, a resident of Paterson, N.J., had joined demonstrators outside Columbia University in the spring of 2024 and was arrested along with others in the street that night, in a case that was swiftly dropped and sealed. But nearly a year later a record of that arrest was shared by the NYPD with federal authorities.
At the time NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the record should have been sealed, but that the NYPD sharing it with federal authorities was above board, because agents with the Homeland Security Investigations had told the NYPD they were investigating Kordia for money laundering. Kordia, however, was never charged with anything, and had only sent some cash payments to family members in Gaza, where dozens of her loved ones had been killed. Kordia has remained in ICE detention for months.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch speaks in Brooklyn alongside FBI Director Kash Patel about an NBA gambling investigation, Oct. 23, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
While the DOI found the city’s sanctuary laws hadn’t been violated in this case either, after this incident, the NYPD changed its policies around requests from federal law enforcement, now sending them through NYPD officers assigned to federal task forces, who have complex vetting procedures around requests to assure they don’t touch on civil immigration enforcement.
Aborted Migrant Shelter Raids
The DOI report also revealed new details about reporting in the New York Times in June about a planned raid Tisch called off at the last minute when she learned the Department of Homeland Security intended to join the NYPD and do a sweep for immigration violations at the Row and the Roosevelt hotels in Manhattan, where the city was housing hundreds of migrants.
The Times reported that Deputy Mayor for Public Safety, Kaz Daughtry, was involved in planning the raid with federal agents before Tisch got wind of it.
Digging into the incident, the DOI interviewed several high-ranking NYPD officials about the planning of the March 10 operation, in which NYPD officers intended to make several arrests at the hotels on criminal warrants, along with one arrest by a joint NYPD and Homeland Security Investigations task force focused on gun trafficking.
But at an event hosted by the Coast Guard on March 5, five days before the intended operation, federal agents told several NYPD officers at the event they intended to send hundreds of officers to New York City to participate in the operation and make arrests for immigration violations.
Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny learned of their intentions but didn’t advise any superiors of the situation and left for vacation, according to the report.
At the same event the feds told another NYPD inspector assigned to the operation, who promptly flagged it for superiors. That ultimately got the operation canned by Tisch when she learned of it, the DOI found.
The DOI also spoke to Daughtry, though it did not draw any conclusions about his involvement. The report however, highlighted conflicting testimony from the two high-ranking officials, Daughtry and Kenny.
Kenny said he hadn’t warned anyone about the planned ICE involvement, whereas Daughtry told investigators he had spoken with Kenny and told him to report it to Tisch.
Daughtry also told DOI investigators he didn’t tell ICE about the planned raid.
“It is unclear how ICE became aware of the NYPD’s planned operation,” the report reads. “DOI did not interview any federal agents in connection with this investigation, including the HSI agents who were part of the task force involved in NYPD’s plans for the Roosevelt and Row Hotel operations.”
Ultimately, the report found, no city resources were expended on immigration enforcement because the joint raid was canceled and thus the city’s sanctuary policies were not violated, but the situation highlighted the need for more training related to this type of occurrence.
“It appears that the Chief of Detectives did not inform the Legal Bureau or the Police Commissioner of ICE’s planned involvement in the operation,” the report found. “To be clear, the Chief of Detectives never committed City resources toward immigration enforcement; in fact, he informed ICE that the NYPD would not do so. Nevertheless, the Chief of Detectives should have proactively raised ICE’s potential involvement in the NYPD’s operation with the Legal Bureau.”
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