New York City’s Sanctuary City Laws Are Worse Than You Think | The American Spectator

New York City’s sanctuary city laws are worse than you think. They do not just protect the general illegal immigrant population who — other than entering the country illegally — have been law abiding. Rather, they protect some of the world’s most violent criminals from deportation by ICE. In 2014, the New York City Council passed two laws that effectively banned the NYPD and Department of Correction (DOC) from nearly all cooperation with ICE. 

The two laws added a requirement that in order for the NYPD or DOC to cooperate with an ICE detainer request for criminals in their custody, the criminal being requested by ICE must have been convicted of what the law defines as a “violent or serious” crime and ICE must have a warrant issued by a judge. However, due to the nature of immigration law, judges in most cases do not have jurisdiction to issue deportation warrants, and so do not. Critics, including the Center for Immigration Studies, have noted that the standard imposed by this type of legislation is “impossible to meet.” This is a clear obstruction of federal law, which ICE is trying to enforce through its deportation efforts.

Nonetheless, this is the law that governs the NYPD and DOC. It has led to horrible results. For example, an off-duty Customs and Border Protection officer was shot in the face by two illegal immigrants in Fort Washington Park on July 20th. The illegals had previously been arrested for criminal behavior on multiple occasions. ICE issued a detainer request for one of the illegals, who was most recently arrested in April for a fourth degree felony. The DOC ignored the detainer request and released the criminal back into society. Three months later, he shot the off duty border patrol officer in the face. 

A similar incident occurred in Brooklyn, where an illegal immigrant raped a homeless woman at knifepoint in Coney Island after being released from Rikers Island just two months earlier in June 2024. When he was serving his sentence at Riker’s, ICE issued a detainer request for him, but it was ignored. The reason he was in Riker’s was because he was convicted of raping a transgender woman in a migrant shelter in Gowanus, Brooklyn. He was released into society due to the City Council’s far Left pro-illegal immigration laws.

The 2014 laws are New York’s most radical sanctuary city laws. They are not the first ones, however. New York City’s first sanctuary city policies began when Mayor Ed Koch signed an executive order that barred city officers and employees from sharing information about a person who is not a citizen with federal immigration authorities but carved out an exception if the person was suspected of criminal activity, including attempting to obtain public assistance benefits through the use of fraudulent documents.

Congress responded by passing a law to prevent cities from forbidding their workers from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement, and New York City responded by incorporating sanctuary city policies into its charter. In 2011, the New York City Council enacted a law that forbade the DOC from honoring ICE detainer requests, but carved out out an exception for cases where the illegal immigrant had been convicted of a crime, had a pending criminal case or an outstanding criminal warrant, or was identified as a known gang member or potential terrorist in a database.

The 2011 law also did not apply if the person had a warrant of removal from ICE. The 2014 laws removed those exceptions and imposed a requirement that the person must have been convicted of a “violent crime or serious crime” within the last five years and that a judge sign a warrant for the person’s detention. However, the judicial warrant the city demands is legally and practically impossible to get in most cases. In the overwhelming majority of cases, judges do not have jurisdiction to issue those kinds of warrants. Plus, the country was overwhelmed with 10 million illegal immigrants when Joe Biden was president, and the courts do not have the capacity to process that kind of caseload. 

The New York City Council knew this. Upon signing the legislation, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office bragged, “it’s estimated that with the judicial warrant requirement, the new policy could bring the percentage of detainers to virtually zero.” The sole purpose of the legislation was to obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration law — the same immigration law that Joe Biden refused to enforce as president. Under the 2014 laws, even if an illegal immigrant was charged with murder and the evidence was convincing, he could not be detained pending a transfer to ICE. Further, even if he were convicted, he could not be handed over to ICE absent a phantom warrant, which the city new was a phantom warrant by its own admission.

The law had the intended effect. According to publicly available data cited in the DOJ’s lawsuit against New York City, the NYPD had not honored any ICE detainer requests since Fiscal Year 2016. When people think of sanctuary cities, they often think of overly sympathetic liberals trying to protect otherwise law abiding illegal immigrants from deportation. However, New York City’s policies go way further than that. They protect the worst of the worst, to the detriment of American citizens.

In 2024, Councilman Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island) and Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens), introduced legislation to overturn all of New York’s sanctuary city laws (including the 2011 ones). The bill currently has only 7 sponsors — it would need 26 votes to pass. It is clear that the political support to enact such legislation does not exist inside the City Council, as New York is a very liberal city.

However, the 2014 laws are so radical and harmful that they are impossible to justify. Even if the Democrats want to protect illegal immigrants from deportation — some say they wanted to make them voters — there is no justifiable reason for refusing to comply with ICE detainer requests for violent criminals. Recidivism rates are very high, and the anti-bail philosophy of criminal court judges coupled with that make for a dangerous combination. Ninety-seven percent of Americans think violent criminals should be deported, but New York City law makes that virtually impossible.

Someone in the New York City Council should introduce legislation strictly to repeal the 2014 laws (and the 2017 law that imposes the same impossible ICE cooperation requirements on the Department of Probation). If Democrats are against deporting illegal immigrants generally because they feel bad for them, they are going to pass some legislation like the one they did in 2011.

However, even from a liberal perspective, there is no rational justification for preventing city agencies from turning over people who have been charged with rape or murder to ICE. Think about it — in New York City, if an illegal immigrant were charged with raping an American citizen, current New York City law prevents the NYPD or the DOC from giving that illegal immigrant to ICE. That is exactly what happened when Daniel Davon-Bonilla, a 24 year old illegal immigrant from Nicaragua, raped a woman at knifepoint on Coney Island, just months after the DOC refused an ICE detainer request for him for raping a different person. 

Even in a Democrat-controlled City Council, in deep blue New York, a policy like that should not be allowed to stand. It is cruel and unjustifiable.

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