New York City Audit Documents 71 Percent Surge in ICE Arrests, Aggressive Enforcement Tactics Inside Sanctuary Jurisdiction

Introduction

On May 22, 2026, the Office of New York City Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani released the Executive Order 13 Report of Audit Findings and Recommendations, a multiagency review of how City government interacts with federal immigration authorities. The headline number is striking: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) arrested 5,567 individuals in the New York City area between January 20, 2025, and March 10, 2026, a 71 percent increase over the same number of days at the close of the prior administration. The audit also documents a sharp escalation in detainer requests, a pronounced shift toward courthouse and check-in arrests, and what the City describes as deceptive tactics employed by federal officers at municipal facilities.

This article summarizes the audit’s principal factual findings, reviews the policy recommendations adopted by the Mayor, and identifies several implications that practitioners representing noncitizens in the New York metropolitan area should be considering now.

The Audit: Scope and Authority

Mayor Mamdani signed Executive Order 13 in February 2026, mandating a citywide audit of policies and protocols governing interactions between City agencies and federal immigration authorities. The audit covered six agencies expressly named in the Order: the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), the New York City Police Department (NYPD), the Department of Correction (DOC), the Department of Probation (DOP), the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), and the Department of Social Services (DSS). New York City Health + Hospitals also contributed findings, and New York City Public Schools conducted an internal review parallel to the formal audit.

The result is a 19-page executive summary that, according to the Mayor’s Office, found that local laws and agency protocols have “largely worked as intended” to protect the rights of New Yorkers regardless of immigration status. At the same time, the audit identifies areas where City policy must be tightened in response to what it characterizes as a changed federal enforcement landscape.

The Enforcement Numbers

The aggregate arrest figure has drawn the most attention. ICE conducted 5,567 arrests in the New York City Area of Responsibility between January 20, 2025, and March 10, 2026. Measured against the equivalent period at the end of the prior administration, that represents a 71 percent increase.

Three features of the arrest pattern are worth flagging for practitioners:

• Courthouse arrests. More than half of the documented arrests took place at immigration court, principally at 26 Federal Plaza, with additional incidents at 290 Broadway and 201 Varick Street. The transformation of mandatory hearing locations into routine apprehension sites is, in the audit’s framing, a defining feature of the post-January 2025 enforcement footprint. In March 2026, federal lawyers acknowledged in court filings that they had relied incorrectly on an internal ICE memorandum to justify some courthouse arrests, a concession that has fueled ongoing litigation and advocacy criticism.
• Alternatives to Detention arrests. Approximately 15 percent of the documented arrests were tied to the ICE Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program. In other words, a meaningful share of those detained were taken into custody at required check-ins or while complying with conditions of supervised release. This is a notable shift from the historical purpose of ATD as a release mechanism for individuals deemed suitable for non-detention monitoring.
• Community and shelter arrests. The audit documents arrests in homes, neighborhoods, and City shelters. It alleges that federal officers have, on occasion, posed as fire officials or otherwise misrepresented their identity to gain access to City facilities. If substantiated, such tactics raise serious questions under both internal ICE policy and general principles governing consent-based entry.

The Detainer Surge

The audit’s most quantitatively dramatic finding concerns immigration detainer requests issued to City agencies. The NYPD received 3,672 civil immigration detainer requests in fiscal year 2025, an increase from 99 in the prior fiscal year. That is a more than thirtyfold rise. The Department of Correction recorded 895 detainer requests in 2025, an increase of more than 120 percent over 2024.

Critically, the City’s compliance posture has not changed. The NYPD did not transfer any individual to ICE custody in response to the 3,672 detainer requests it received, consistent with New York City Administrative Code provisions limiting cooperation absent a judicial warrant and a qualifying conviction. The DOC’s compliance rate was similarly minimal. The audit nonetheless notes that the volume of requests alone places administrative burdens on City agencies and creates risk of inadvertent disclosure or cooperation.

Recommendations Adopted by the Mayor

The audit contains more than two dozen agency-specific recommendations, all of which the Mayor has accepted. Notable examples include:

• ACS will strengthen its practice of reviewing determinations to seek orders of protection, with attention to potential negative immigration consequences for a parent when child and caregiver safety can be otherwise assured.
• The NYPD Communications Division will be required to notify Operations of any 911 calls relating to the presence of federal immigration authorities or to immigration enforcement activity.
• The Department of Probation will limit immigration status detail in pre-sentencing reports.
• DOC will improve tracking and public posting of detainer requests received.
• Shelter incident reporting protocols will be revised to better document interactions with federal agents.
• Annual refresher training on sanctuary law obligations will be required for relevant agency staff, including child welfare personnel.

The recommendations are framed as compliance and transparency measures rather than as expansions of sanctuary protections. The Mayor’s Office has emphasized that the goal is consistent application of existing law and improved documentation of federal enforcement activity within City systems, not new restrictions on cooperation.

Are the Recommendations Vulnerable to Federal Preemption Challenge?

Given the current Department of Justice posture toward sanctuary jurisdictions, the question whether the Executive Order 13 recommendations can withstand a federal preemption or anti-commandeering challenge is a fair one. Our analysis is that, as described in the executive summary, the recommendations are designed to operate within the existing federal-state framework and do not on their face cross the lines drawn by the controlling statutes and case law. We address the relevant authorities below and then apply them to the specific measures.

The Statutory and Constitutional Framework

Two federal statutes are typically invoked by the government in suits against sanctuary jurisdictions: 8 U.S.C. § 1373 and 8 U.S.C. § 1644. Section 1373(a) provides that a state or local government entity or official “may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from” federal immigration authorities information regarding the citizenship or immigration status of an individual. Section 1644 contains a parallel restriction in the welfare context. The critical textual feature of both provisions is that they bar restrictions on the voluntary sharing of immigration status information. They do not affirmatively require state or local entities to collect such information, nor do they require state or local entities to expend resources assisting in federal civil immigration enforcement.

The constitutional ceiling on federal authority in this area is the anti-commandeering doctrine, rooted in the Tenth Amendment and most recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, 584 U.S. 453, 138 S. Ct. 1461 (2018). The doctrine prohibits Congress from compelling state or local officials to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program. Under Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997), and Murphy, the federal government cannot require New York City officers to honor civil immigration detainers, to investigate immigration status, or to participate in federal civil enforcement operations, absent a voluntary agreement under 8 U.S.C. § 1357(g).

In the Second Circuit, the leading decision is City of New York v. United States, 179 F.3d 29 (2d Cir. 1999), in which the court rejected the City’s facial Tenth Amendment challenge to Sections 1373 and 1644. That decision establishes the binding rule in this Circuit: those provisions are not facially unconstitutional insofar as they prohibit restrictions on the voluntary flow of immigration status information to federal authorities. The decision does not, however, hold that the federal government may compel affirmative cooperation, and it does not address the modern enforcement context that has produced the current wave of litigation.

Recent Federal Litigation Against Sanctuary Jurisdictions

The federal government has filed a series of preemption-based lawsuits against sanctuary jurisdictions since early 2025. Two outcomes are particularly relevant for New York City practitioners:

• First, in United States v. State of New York, the federal government sued to invalidate the Protect Our Courts Act (POCA), N.Y. Civil Rights Law § 28, and related state Executive Orders 170 and 170.1, which restrict civil immigration arrests at or near New York state courthouses. On November 17, 2025, the District Court for the Northern District of New York (D’Agostino, J.) dismissed the action, observing that “the United States fails to identify any federal law mandating that state and local officials generally assist or cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts,” and that “[n]o such federal laws exist because the Tenth Amendment prohibits Congress from conscripting state and local officials and resources to assist with federal regulatory schemes, like immigration enforcement.” The court accordingly held that the State’s measures were not preempted by the Supremacy Clause or by Section 1373. The federal government filed a notice of appeal to the Second Circuit on January 15, 2026, and that appeal is pending.
• Second, in United States v. Illinois, No. 25 CV 1285 (N.D. Ill.), Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins dismissed the federal government’s preemption action on July 25, 2025, primarily on standing grounds but with extensive anti-commandeering analysis. The court characterized the federal suit as “an end-run around the Tenth Amendment” and reasoned that if the State, County, and City “cannot control whether and how their employees share information with the federal government, they cannot affirmatively opt-out of enforcing federal immigration laws.” The dismissal converted to one with prejudice on August 26, 2025, after the federal government declined to file an amended complaint. The Department of Justice filed a notice of appeal to the Seventh Circuit in late October 2025, and that appeal is also pending. While the Illinois decision is not binding in the Second Circuit, it reflects a broader trend of federal courts declining to read Sections 1373 and 1644 as broad preemption vehicles capable of overriding state non-cooperation policies. The pendency of parallel appeals in the Second and Seventh Circuits raises the prospect of a circuit split that could draw Supreme Court attention.

Application to the Executive Order 13 Recommendations

Measured against the foregoing framework, the audit’s principal recommendations appear to operate well within the legal space available to a municipal government.

ACS review of orders of protection. The recommendation that ACS strengthen its review of whether to seek orders of protection, taking immigration consequences into account where child and caregiver safety can otherwise be met, is an internal child welfare adjudicative practice. It does not restrict the sharing of immigration status information with federal authorities, and it is well within ACS’s traditional discretion. Section 1373 is not implicated.

NYPD Communications notification protocol. The recommendation that the NYPD Communications Division notify Operations of 911 calls concerning the presence of federal immigration authorities is an internal coordination measure that flows information laterally within the City government. Section 1373 governs the flow of information from local to federal authorities, not the opposite direction or intra-municipal communications. This recommendation does not engage the statute.

DOP limitations on immigration status detail in pre-sentencing reports. Pre-sentencing reports are prepared for use by state criminal courts, not for transmission to federal immigration authorities. Section 1373 protects the voluntary disclosure of immigration status information to federal authorities; it does not require collection of that information in the first instance, and it does not regulate the content of state court submissions. Federal courts have repeatedly observed that Section 1373 contains no affirmative collection mandate.

DOC tracking and public posting of detainer requests. This is a transparency measure. It does not prohibit anything. To the contrary, it makes the volume and nature of federal enforcement activity more visible. While the federal government has on occasion taken the position that detainer information is law enforcement sensitive, detainer practice is not itself classified, and the City’s posting of aggregated request data is far removed from anything Section 1373 prohibits.

Shelter incident reporting and annual training. Internal reporting and training requirements are core exercises of municipal employment authority. They do not restrict information sharing with federal authorities and they do not impede federal enforcement; they ensure that City employees understand and comply with existing local law.

The harder question: courthouse-related and shelter-related measures. The recommendations most likely to attract federal attention are those that limit federal access to City facilities, including shelters, or that document and restrict consent to entry. Here, the Northern District of New York’s reasoning in United States v. State of New York is directly on point: a sovereign may decline to make its facilities available for federal civil immigration arrests, and may regulate consent to entry, without running afoul of the Supremacy Clause. The audit’s shelter incident reporting recommendations, viewed against that backdrop, document and channel a discretion the City has always possessed. They do not bar federal officers from doing what federal law actually authorizes them to do; they ensure that City employees do not voluntarily exceed federal law’s actual reach.

Bottom Line

Based on the executive summary as released, none of the adopted recommendations restricts the voluntary sharing of immigration status information from City employees to federal authorities, which is the conduct that Section 1373 actually polices. The recommendations are training, documentation, transparency, and internal-coordination measures, supported by the anti-commandeering principle and consistent with the trend of recent federal district court decisions, including the Northern District of New York’s ruling on POCA and the Northern District of Illinois’s ruling on the Illinois TRUST Act and Chicago Welcoming City Ordinance. A future federal preemption suit is not impossible, particularly if the Second or Seventh Circuit reverses on appeal, or if a circuit split emerges that prompts Supreme Court review. But on the present state of the law, the audit’s recommendations stand on firm ground. Practitioners and clients should not treat the recommendations as legally precarious, although the underlying litigation landscape should continue to be monitored.

Significance for Immigration Practice

For removal defense practitioners working in the New York metropolitan area, the audit confirms patterns that have been visible on the ground for many months. Several points warrant operational attention:

• Counsel clients in advance of court appearances. With more than half of documented arrests occurring at immigration court, attorneys must continue to prepare clients for the possibility of apprehension at routine master and individual calendar hearings. This includes practical guidance on family contact information, emergency powers of attorney, and the documentation a client should and should not carry. It also includes a candid conversation about the risk profile of any particular hearing, particularly where ICE may have an active interest in the case.
• ATD check-ins are not safe harbors. The 15 percent ATD-related arrest figure should dispel any residual assumption that compliance with supervision conditions provides protection against apprehension. Counsel should evaluate, on a client-by-client basis, whether to accompany clients to check-ins and what contingency arrangements should be in place.
• Detainer practice has not changed in New York City. The audit confirms that City agencies, including the NYPD and DOC, are not honoring civil detainers in the absence of judicial process. Practitioners representing noncitizens in pretrial or post-conviction posture in New York criminal courts should continue to rely on the City’s non-cooperation framework, while recognizing that ICE has demonstrated willingness to conduct apprehensions in alternate settings.
• Document federal misconduct. If federal officers misrepresent their identity, enter premises without consent, or conduct courthouse arrests in a manner inconsistent with current ICE policy or the relief currently in litigation, that conduct should be documented contemporaneously. Such documentation may be relevant to suppression motions, prosecutorial discretion requests, and potential civil claims.

Conclusion

The Executive Order 13 audit is, at its core, an exercise in municipal compliance review. It does not change federal immigration law, nor does it expand New York City’s sanctuary framework beyond the parameters set by existing local law. What it does provide is a structured, City-issued evidentiary record of how federal immigration enforcement has been conducted in the five boroughs over the past fifteen months. For practitioners, that record is useful both as a factual baseline in client counseling and as a citable source in litigation and advocacy. The Office of the Law Offices of Grinberg & Segal, PLLC will continue to monitor implementation of the audit’s recommendations and any related federal litigation.