DOI made seven recommendations advising NYPD to tighten up its reporting and documentation protocols. The NYPD accepted all seven.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the report demonstrates, the NYPD has worked diligently to comply with New York\u2019s sanctuary city laws,\u201d said Brad Weekes, an NYPD spokesperson. \u201cWe appreciate DOI\u2019s comprehensive report and have accepted all their recommendations to make our policies even stronger.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The DOI\u2019s probe was prompted by a request from the City Council<\/a> in June. In a joint statement from Councilmember Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) and Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens), the two said the investigation \u201crevealed gaps in NYPD\u2019s compliance with our city\u2019s laws that must be addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n Landed in El Salvador<\/p>\n One of the incidents probed by the DOI involved Merwil Guti\u00e9rrez Flores, a 19-year-old asylum-seeker who lived in the Bronx, and whose dealings with law enforcement were reported<\/a> by THE CITY.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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 Guti\u00e9rrez Flores, the NYPD transferred him to the custody of the FBI, which within an hour transferred him to ICE.\u00a0<\/p>\n Once in ICE custody, Gutierrez Flores was among the Venezuelans accused of gang affiliation<\/a> 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. Guti\u00e9rrez Flores, whose detention was first reported by Documented<\/a>, languished there for 125 days before he was released through a deal with Venezuelan authorities<\/a> in July.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Still, the report notes that \u201cthe FBI\u2019s decision to transfer Mr. Guti\u00e9rrez Flores to ICE within an hour of his release from NYPD custody highlights an important consideration for the NYPD\u2019s policies \u2014 even federal agencies not traditionally thought to enforce civil immigration laws, like the FBI, may assist in civil immigration enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n In this case, the NYPD was alerted by ICE at about 7 p.m. on Feb. 25 that the agency was seeking Guti\u00e9rrez Flores on a civil immigration detainer. That request was properly denied by the NYPD, according to DOI, because it wasn\u2019t accompanied by a required judicial warrant.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was three hours later, around 10 p.m., that the Bronx district attorney\u2019s office formally notified the department that it would be declining to prosecute Guti\u00e9rrez 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., Guti\u00e9rrez Flores was in FBI custody.<\/p>\n Among other incidents inspected by DOI was another reported on by THE CITY<\/a>, in which an NYPD document of a sealed summons record<\/a> made its way into the ICE deportation case against a young Palestinian woman named Leqaa Kordia, which was first reported by the Associated Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kordia, a resident of Paterson, N.J., had joined demonstrators<\/a> 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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<\/a> for months.<\/p>\n While the DOI found the city\u2019s sanctuary laws hadn\u2019t 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\u2019t touch on civil immigration enforcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n Aborted Migrant Shelter Raids<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/250404-VenezuelaDeportations-1-1024x683-1.webp\")
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<\/p>\n![\"NYPD](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/102325_nba_gambling_takedown-10.jpg\")
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<\/p>\n