House Judiciary: NYC Plea Deals Shield Noncitizens

A report from the House Judiciary Committee alleges that New York City prosecutors across all five boroughs granted preferential treatment to noncitizen defendants to help them avoid deportation.

The committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, stated that nonpublic documents obtained during oversight work reveal the extent to which district attorney offices sought to limit immigration consequences in criminal cases.

The report identifies the Bronx office under DA Darcel Clark as a primary site of these practices. Internal materials allegedly instruct staff to conceal specific facts from conviction records and to pursue charges that do not trigger deportation.

According to the document, Bronx prosecutors were told to omit references to firearms from records to maintain what they termed immigration-conscious plea bargaining. In cases of domestic violence or crimes against children, staff were directed to leave out the defendant's relationship to the victim and to avoid specifying the ages of child victims.

The committee also accused Clark's office of encouraging pleas to legally impossible charges. One example cited was a guilty plea to attempted reckless assault. The report notes that while New York courts allow such pleas, a defendant pleading to this specific charge could remain in the country indefinitely.

State data obtained by the Immigrant Defense Project supports the frequency of this specific charge. It shows 289 convictions for attempted reckless assault across New York City from 2015 through 2025. Of those, 50 occurred in the Bronx.

The report points to similar tactics in the Queens office led by DA Melinda Katz. It cites a May 2026 email from a Queens prosecutor to an NYPD detective. The email states that the office made a plea deal that was immigration safe while allowing the defendant to plead to multiple crimes and serve jail time.

In Manhattan, DA Alvin Bragg issued a memo in 2022 directing prosecutors to seek dispositions that avoid immigration consequences for all misdemeanors and felonies where jail time was not expected. Bragg's office later described that policy as outdated and said it had updated the guidelines to allow for individual discretion.

The report notes that Brooklyn and Staten Island offices used comparable tactics. The Staten Island office responded to the findings by calling them flagrantly false and patently political. It stated that it continues to ask ICE to allow prosecutions to complete before deportation to ensure victims receive justice.

The committee highlighted that the NYPD declined 20,255 immigration detainers between July 2018 and June 2026. The city's Department of Correction declined all 2,852 detainers it received during that same period. Nearly 10,000 of those detainers were lodged between July 2025 and June 2026, a period that aligns with the current administration's more aggressive enforcement efforts. House Republicans are currently advancing legislation to limit sanctuary policies in local jurisdictions.