The number of detainer requests Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents sent to the city’s Department of Correction more than doubled during President Donald Trump’s first year back in office. AP file photo by Steve Helber
By Jacob Kaye
The number of times Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents asked the Department of Correction to give them a heads up before a detainee’s release so that they could make an arrest more than doubled during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, compared to the year prior, according to the DOC.
ICE agents made nearly 900 detainer requests to the DOC in 2025, asking the agency to notify them before a detainee’s release and to hold the detainee for 48 hours beyond their scheduled release.
In 2024, ICE made 403 detainer requests, DOC’s top attorney, James Conroy, said during a City Council oversight hearing about the agency’s coordination with ICE on Thursday.
But while the city saw a major uptick in detainer requests, the number of times the DOC worked with ICE to turn a detainee over to them remained relatively flat. In 2024, the DOC honored 18 of the 403 detainer requests. In 2025, it honored 25 requests, Conroy said.
The city’s sanctuary laws, which the federal government has challenged in an ongoing lawsuit, largely prevent the DOC from honoring ICE detainer requests, except in instances where a detainee has been charged with a “violent or serious” crime.
But a September report from the Department of Investigation found that in at least two instances, a DOC officer violated the law by communicating with ICE agents ahead of several detainees’ releases.
Though the investigation identified only one officer who violated the rules, immigration attorneys told the Council that misunderstandings about the city’s sanctuary laws have persisted across agencies for years.
“Frontline staff are often placed in situations involving immigration authorities without clear direction,” said Sophie Dalsimer, the associate director of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project at Brooklyn Defender Services.
“This confusion is not incidental,” she added. “It is the result of agencies failing to provide adequate guidance, training, and internal protocols to ensure compliance.”
The lack of comprehension of the city’s law has played into the hands of an emboldened ICE, said City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan, who chairs the Committee on Oversight and Investigations and led the hearing alongside the Committee on Criminal Justice on Thursday.
“This federal government is resorting to any means possible to test, in any way possible, at any cost, the boundaries of our sanctuary laws,” Krishnan said. “This is a federal government that has shown deliberately it will do what it can to try to undermine and erode our laws.”
City Councilmember Shekar Krishnan, who chairs the Council’s Committee on Oversight and Investigations. Photo by Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit
The DOC has largely agreed to implement the little more than half-dozen policies the DOI recommended they change in the September report. Under Mayor Zohran Mamdani and new DOC Commissioner Stanley Richards, the agency is more aligned with the Council’s efforts to prevent ICE from entering Rikers Island and to generally enforce sanctuary city laws.
The tenor of the hearing would have likely been quite different had it been held while former Mayor Eric Adams was still in office.
During his tenure, Adams attempted to illegally enact an executive order that would have allowed ICE to open an office on Rikers Island, a practice that was banned when the city passed its sanctuary laws in 2014.
A state judge tossed the order when she ruled that it had appeared that Adams only issued it as a favor to Trump, whose Department of Justice had recently dismissed the bribery indictment the former mayor was facing.
Adams also vetoed a City Council bill explicitly barring ICE from operating on Rikers on his last day in office. The Council overrode his veto in a January vote.
The surge in detainer requests comes amid a broader increase in ICE activity across the city during Trump’s first year back in office.
The agency conducted a highly-publicized raid on Canal Street in October and launched an early-morning raid in December in Jackson Heights, where locals gathered around them and yelled at the agents until they left.
For months, ICE agents have also conducted arrests at the immigration courthouse at 26 Federal Plaza, where they set up a makeshift detention center that has drawn scrutiny over poor conditions.
