The facts
The House Judiciary Committee and its Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement released an interim staff report on October 26, 2026, titled New York City: The Dangerous Consequences of Sanctuary Policies. The report says New York City has obstructed federal law enforcement with its sanctuary policies for years, and that nonpublic documents and data obtained by the Committee and Subcommittee show how far that obstruction goes.
A detainer, the report explains, is the formal request that a state or local law enforcement agency notify ICE before releasing a criminal alien, or hold that person for a short period until ICE can arrest them in a secure setting. According to ICE information cited in the report, sanctuary jurisdictions declined to honor at least 41,085 detainers between October 2022 and early 2026. In New York City specifically, the numbers are starker: in roughly the past year alone, the NYPD received nearly 10,000 detainers and honored zero. From July 1, 2018, through June 30, 2026, the NYPD received 20,255 detainers and did not honor a single one, and the Department of Correction received nearly 3,000 detainers and refused to honor any of them.
The report names the chief prosecutors for the city's five boroughs, District Attorneys Melinda Katz, Darcel Clark, Alvin Bragg, Eric Gonzalez, and Michael McMahon, and says they ensure prosecutors in their offices give preferential treatment to foreign nationals based solely on their immigration status, so that criminal aliens can avoid deportation and remain in the United States indefinitely.
The Bronx section is the wildest part. The report says Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark trains prosecutors in her office to "conceal certain facts from the record of conviction" and pursue alternative charges so that defendants remain eligible to stay in the United States. Her office, the report says, encourages prosecutors to concoct nonexistent, legally impossible charges for foreign national defendants, arranged as plea deals for crimes that are legally impossible or hypothetical. The example given is "attempted reckless assault," which the report calls a legal impossibility because it would require the defendant to hold two contradictory mental states simultaneously, since a defendant cannot intend to be reckless.
In Queens, the report says District Attorney Melinda Katz urges prosecutors to "exercise extreme caution" in resolving cases involving foreign nationals, and advises them to "not get caught up in the label of [f]elonies, [m]isdemeanors" when considering immigration consequences. Katz employs an "Immigration Specialist" who helps assistant district attorneys navigate plea options and frame dispositions that will prevent unwanted immigration consequences. In 2020, that specialist assisted with more than 30 dispositions, including 21 cases where defendants had their convictions reduced or vacated entirely and six cases where the District Attorney recommended a pardon to the Governor. In 2021, Katz personally authorized 27 applications to replead convictions that had significant immigration consequences. In one e-mail from May 2026 cited by the report, a prosecutor in Katz's office told an NYPD detective the office had made a deal that was "immigration safe" while still having the defendant plead to multiple crimes and do some jail time.
The report closes by describing New York's leaders as indicative of a modern, radical, socialist Democrat Party that seeks to erase national borders and place illegal alien criminals ahead of law-abiding American citizens.
Our take
Let's get this straight: in the Bronx, the District Attorney's office is a fucking writers' room for law that doesn't exist. Darcel Clark isn't running a prosecution shop; she's running a scam factory where the product is bullshit charges pulled from a clown's ass. 'Attempted reckless assault' isn't a crime; it's a contradictory word salad that requires a defendant to simultaneously plan and give zero fucks. It's a legal impossibility, which makes it the perfect charge for a system that gives zero shits about reality, only about keeping bodies off ICE's roster. This isn't progressive justice; it's prosecutorial fraud with a smug smile, training lawyers to lie on the record so some dickhead can stay in the country. What a proud fucking legacy: turning the courthouse into a theater for legally impossible fan fiction, where the script is written to dodge deportation, not deliver truth. The sheer, balls-out arrogance of putting this shit in training manuals is staggering. They're not even sneaky grifters; they're lazy, entitled pricks documenting their own contempt for the law they swore to uphold. And the cherry on this shit-cake? They're proud of it. They file it, they e-mail it, they count it like a badge of honor. Twenty thousand detainers ignored, a perfect zero. Not a single one honored. That's not a policy; that's a giant 'fuck you' carved into the city's skyline, a middle finger so massive it needs its own zip code. Meanwhile, over in Queens, they've professionalized the con. Melinda Katz employs an 'Immigration Specialist' - a fucking plea-deal contortionist whose job is to twist convictions into pretzels until the deportation risk falls out. They brag about vacating convictions and begging the governor for pardons like they're collecting charity fucking trophies. An e-mail brags about an 'immigration safe' deal that still puts someone in jail. Safe for who? For the system's conscience, which is apparently more fragile than a soap bubble in a hurricane. These people have turned the justice system into a shell game, where the pea of accountability is always under a different, nonexistent charge. They're not protecting the vulnerable; they're protecting their own vanity, their political narrative, at the cost of the public's trust and safety. The whole operation is a testament to a specific kind of cowardice: the cowardice of never letting consequences land where they fucking should, of inventing a fantasy world where the law is whatever you need it to be to feel like a good person. It's pathetic, it's dangerous, and it's a complete abdication of duty wrapped in the smug language of compassion. Fuck every single one of these self-important assholes playing pretend with public safety.
