A report from the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee alleges that prosecutors in all five New York City boroughs gave "preferential treatment" to noncitizens accused of crimes, with the aim of helping them avoid deportation. The committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said nonpublic documents gathered during its oversight work revealed new details about how far the city's district attorney's offices went to limit the immigration consequences of criminal cases.
The most serious allegations target Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark. According to the report, she trains prosecutors to "conceal certain facts" from conviction records and to pursue charges that would not trigger removal. Internal Bronx materials cited by the committee tell prosecutors to keep references to firearms out of conviction records as part of "immigration-conscious plea bargaining."
In domestic violence cases and crimes against children, which are often deportable under the Immigration and Nationality Act, Bronx prosecutors were reportedly told to omit the relationship between defendant and victim and to pursue charges that do not specify a child victim's age. Clark, the Bronx DA since 2016, was also accused of encouraging staff to charge foreign nationals with "nonexistent, legally impossible" crimes.
The report points to "attempted reckless assault" as an example. Its authors called the offense legally impossible because a person cannot intend to act recklessly, and said a guilty plea to it could let a noncitizen remain in the country indefinitely. New York courts nonetheless permit such pleas in negotiated deals, and the state's Court of Appeals upheld the concept this year. Data obtained by the Immigrant Defense Project showed 289 convictions for the offense across the city from 2015 through 2025, including 50 in the Bronx.
The committee also cited the Queens DA's office, led by Melinda Katz since 2020. It quoted a May 2026 email in which a Queens prosecutor told an NYPD detective that the office had "basically made a [plea] deal which is 'immigration safe' while still having [the defendant] plea to multiple crimes and do some jail time." Queens prosecutors were also told to "exercise extreme caution" in cases involving noncitizens and to consult the office's immigration specialist.
In Manhattan, the report said DA Alvin Bragg issued a 2022 memo directing prosecutors to "seek dispositions that avoid immigration consequences for all misdemeanors, and all felonies" where jail time was generally not expected. Bragg's office described the January 2022 policy as "outdated" and said it has since been updated to give prosecutors discretion in individual cases. The report alleged the Brooklyn and Staten Island offices used comparable tactics.
The Staten Island DA's office called the report "flagrantly false and patently political." It said it will keep asking ICE to let it prosecute and convict criminals before they are deported, because Congress has failed to secure the border. "That is the only way to guarantee our victims justice and to keep our communities safe," the office said. The other four offices and the mayor's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The report also addressed detainers, which are federal requests asking local authorities to briefly hold certain noncitizens so ICE can take them into custody. It said the NYPD declined 20,255 detainers between July 2018 and June 2026, while the city's Department of Correction declined all 2,852 it received in that period. Those figures are not necessarily surprising, since each mayoral administration during that time limited city agencies from cooperating with ICE.
What stands out is timing: nearly half the detainers, almost 10,000, were lodged between July 2025 and June 2026. That suggests the second Trump administration has been far more aggressive than the Biden administration or the first Trump administration in trying to take custody of noncitizens arrested by local police.
The findings come as House Republicans push legislation to bar state and local governments from restricting cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The committee advanced the Shut Down Sanctuary Policies Act in March, though the bill has stalled in the House, and the report said lawmakers will continue investigating sanctuary jurisdictions.
