Over the past year, federal immigration agents asked the New York Police Department nearly 10,000 times to hold onto someone in its custody so ICE could pick them up.
The NYPD said yes zero times.
That's about 27 requests a day, every day, for a year. Every time, the person ICE wanted walked out the door.
The figures come from an interim staff report released Monday by House Judiciary Committee Republicans, led by Chairman Jim Jordan. The report lays out how far New York City has gone to keep illegal immigrants out of federal hands.
Last year wasn't a fluke. From July 2018 through June 2026, the NYPD received 20,255 ICE detainers and honored none of them. The city's Department of Correction, which runs Rikers Island, received nearly 3,000 detainers over the same period, and the report says it honored none of those either. Statewide, DHS says, authorities have ignored 16,070 detainers.
A detainer is how ICE asks a local jail to hold someone who's already in custody for up to 48 hours, long enough for federal agents to come get them. By the time the request arrives, the person has already been arrested, booked, and flagged by ICE for removal.
In New York City, the answer is no before the request even comes in. City law bars police and jails from honoring a detainer unless a federal judge has signed a warrant and the person has a conviction for a violent or serious crime, or matches the terrorist watchlist. Everyone else gets released, whatever ICE knows about them.
Here's what that looks like in practice. In March, prosecutors say, Roman Ceron Amatitla set fire to a building in Flushing, Queens, that he had picked at random. Four people died, including a 3-year-old child, and seven more were hurt. He's charged with eight counts of murder and arson.
ICE asked the city to hold him. The city's Department of Correction said no. That was in April, four months into Mayor Zohran Mamdani's term.
He's still sitting on Rikers Island on the murder charges. If a judge ever sets bail, or a jury acquits him, New York City has already told the federal government it won't hand him over.
The report says the city's prosecutors go a step further.
According to the committee, the Bronx District Attorney's office trains prosecutors to keep certain facts off the record of conviction and to pursue alternative charges for noncitizens. The committee says that includes encouraging prosecutors to "concoct nonexistent, legally impossible charges for foreign national defendants." The goal is a conviction that won't trigger deportation.
In Queens, District Attorney Melinda Katz's office allegedly tells prosecutors to "exercise extreme caution" in cases involving foreign nationals. It also tells them not to "get caught up in the label of" felony or misdemeanor when weighing immigration consequences. The report says those consequences get weighed even in cases involving domestic violence, strangulation, firearms, and crimes against children.
Put simply, an American citizen and an illegal immigrant charged with the same crime in New York can walk out with different deals. A conviction might get the immigrant deported, and prosecutors work to make sure it doesn't.
City leaders say all this builds "trust" between immigrant communities and police.
Crime has been falling across most of the country, and even New York's citywide numbers have improved. Underground, things are getting worse. As of mid-October, there had been six murders in the subway system this year, compared with four in all of 2025. Felony assaults on the subway are up nearly 12 percent.
Mamdani has been asked repeatedly whether he'll put more police on the subway. He keeps changing the subject to affordability.
Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute has pointed out that while the NYPD focuses on gangs, "the broader criminal-justice system still regularly releases hard-core recidivists."
New York City's sanctuary laws keep that cycle going. Since 2018, ICE has asked the NYPD 20,255 times to hold someone it wanted, and the NYPD hasn't said yes once.