The facts
The United States of America sued the City of New York and a pile of its agencies and officials, case No. 25-CV-04084 in the Eastern District of New York, in a bid to preempt New York City Administrative Code sections 9-131, 9-205, 14-154, 10-178 and New York City Police Department Operations Order No. 4, the city’s “Sanctuary Provisions”, as violations of the Supremacy Clause. The United States filed the case on July 24, 2025. New York City moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6).
On October 15, 2026, in Brooklyn, United States District Judge Ramón E. Reyes, Jr. granted the motion, dismissed the complaint, and directed the clerk to close the case. In a footnote, Reyes wrote that the case is “among nearly a dozen recent cases” in which the United States challenged sanctuary provisions, and that “In all prior cases, the United States’ challenges to such provisions have been rejected.” He then listed the graveyard: New Jersey, Rochester, Washtenaw County, Minnesota, Newark, Los Angeles, Boston, Colorado, two in the Northern District of New York, and Illinois. That is eleven rejections before this one, which makes the New York City dismissal loss number twelve.
The opinion explains why the argument keeps dying. Compliance with section 287.7 detainers is not mandatory. New York state law says local officers are not authorized by New York law to effectuate arrests for civil law immigration violations. New York City will only honor a detainer if the feds show up with a judicial warrant and the person has been convicted of a violent or serious crime or matches the terrorist screening database. And if federal immigration authorities fail to produce a judicial warrant within forty-eight hours, “such person shall be released and the department shall not notify federal immigration authorities of such person’s release.” NYPD Operations Order No. 4 bars officers from contacting federal civil immigration authorities to say where an individual is located.
Our take
Twelve. The federal government has now sued a dozen cities, counties, and states over the same sanctuary argument and lost all twelve, and Judge Reyes was kind enough to staple the rap sheet to his order so nobody has to take his word for it. This is not litigation. This is a man who keeps proposing to a woman who has said no twelve times, except the man is the United States of America and the ring is taxpayer money.
The feds’ big idea was that New York City must hold people on nothing but an administrative ask. The court’s answer, in so many words: no it fucking doesn’t. Detainers are not mandatory. State law forbids local cops from making civil immigration arrests. The city’s rule is bring a real warrant within 48 hours or the guy walks and nobody calls you. That is not some radical sanctuary manifesto. That is the bare minimum the Constitution has required since forever, and the government’s lawyers keep filing it like it’s a brand new insight.
Somewhere in Washington there is a DOJ attorney whose entire job is copy-pasting the same losing complaint into a new docket and hoping the next judge didn’t read the other eleven orders. Reyes read them. He cited them. He closed the case.
