By Jacob Kaye<\/p>\n
The number of times Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents asked the Department of Correction to give them a heads up before a detainee\u2019s release so that they could make an arrest more than doubled during the first year of President Donald Trump\u2019s second term, compared to the year prior, according to the DOC.<\/p>\n
ICE agents made nearly 900 detainer requests to the DOC in 2025, asking the agency to notify them before a detainee\u2019s release and to hold the detainee for 48 hours beyond their scheduled release.<\/p>\n
In 2024, ICE made 403 detainer requests, DOC\u2019s top attorney, James Conroy, said during a City Council oversight hearing about the agency\u2019s coordination with ICE on Thursday.<\/p>\n
But while the city saw a major uptick in detainer requests, the number of times the DOC worked with ICE to turn a detainee over to them remained relatively flat. In 2024, the DOC honored 18 of the 403 detainer requests. In 2025, it honored 25 requests, Conroy said.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s sanctuary laws, which the federal government has challenged in an ongoing lawsuit, largely prevent the DOC from honoring ICE detainer requests, except in instances where a detainee has been charged with a \u201cviolent or serious\u201d crime.<\/p>\n
But a September report from the Department of Investigation found that in at least two instances, a DOC officer violated the law by communicating with ICE agents ahead of several detainees\u2019 releases.<\/p>\n
Though the investigation identified only one officer who violated the rules, immigration attorneys told the Council that misunderstandings about the city\u2019s sanctuary laws have persisted across agencies for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrontline staff are often placed in situations involving immigration authorities without clear direction,\u201d said Sophie Dalsimer, the associate director of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project at Brooklyn Defender Services.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis confusion is not incidental,\u201d she added. \u201cIt is the result of agencies failing to provide adequate guidance, training, and internal protocols to ensure compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lack of comprehension of the city\u2019s law has played into the hands of an emboldened ICE, said City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan, who chairs the Committee on Oversight and Investigations and led the hearing alongside the Committee on Criminal Justice on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis federal government is resorting to any means possible to test, in any way possible, at any cost, the boundaries of our sanctuary laws,\u201d Krishnan said. \u201cThis is a federal government that has shown deliberately it will do what it can to try to undermine and erode our laws.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jacob Kaye The number of times Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents asked the Department of Correction to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-154823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-queens","12":"tag-queens-headlines","13":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}