New York County Defender Services

Testimony of

Brittany Brown

Supervisor, Collateral Consequences Unit

New York County Defender Services

Before the

City Council Committee on Oversight and Investigations

Oversight - The Department of Investigation’s Reports on Agency Compliance with

Sanctuary-related Local Laws

March 5, 2026

Thank you to the Committee on Oversight and Investigations for holding this public hearing to

address the Department of Investigation (DOI) report on the compliance of the New York City

Police Department (NYPD) and the Department of Correction (DOC) with sanctuary-related

local laws. My name is Brittany Brown and I am the Supervising Attorney of the Collateral

Consequences Unit at New York County Defender Services (NYCDS). NYCDS is an indigent

defense office that every year represents tens of thousands of New Yorkers in Manhattan’s

Criminal, Family, and Supreme Courts. Our organization includes attorneys who specialize in

immigration matters, and advise our clients on any immigration consequences stemming from

criminal legal system-involvement, including deportation. They also assist our non-citizen clients

with other immigration issues, such as representing them in immigration court and

accompanying them to ICE check-ins. Consequently, we frequently represent clients who may

have collateral immigration consequences due to their interaction with the criminal legal system.

We, therefore, thank you Chair Krishnan for holding today’s hearing and to all of the Council

Members that seek to bring more transparency to our city agencies compliance with sanctuary

city laws.

I. Background:

New York City adopted sanctuary laws to ensure that city agencies do not participate in federal

immigration enforcement. These laws establish clear limits on how and when city agencies maycommunicate with federal immigration authorities. Yet the DOI report demonstrates that these

legal protections are only as strong as agency compliance.1 Notably, the detainer law violations

identified in the report occurred under the prior mayoral administration. During previous

administrations, advocates consistently raised concerns that city agencies, particularly DOC and

NYPD, were engaging in practices that circumvented or undermined these safeguards. Our

organization has previously raised these concerns before the Council and the Board of

Correction, including testimony describing how our client was unlawfully transferred from DOC

custody to ICE custody after information was shared between the two agencies during the

previous Adams administration.2 This client’s experience demonstrated how even limited

communication between local agencies and federal immigration authorities can trigger

devastating consequences for immigrant New Yorkers. We are hopeful that these concerns will

be allayed under the new mayoral administration.

This conversation comes at a particularly urgent moment, as federal government is dramatically

escalating immigration enforcement.3 Across the country we have seen the Trump administration

implement increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement actions that terrorize communities

and undermine public trust. Most recently we saw this in Minnesota, where a sweeping federal

immigration crackdown resulted in widespread fear, mass arrests, and the tragic deaths of

civilians.4 These events sent shockwaves through communities across the country and

demonstrated how rapidly aggressive immigration enforcement can escalate into violence and

tragedy. As these events unfolded, we all watched closely, including immigrants in New York.

The specter of similar enforcement tactics reaching our city currently looms over all of us. We

now live under the real fear that similar tactics could occur here, and that local agencies could

contribute to those harms through unlawful communication or cooperation with federal

immigration authorities.

To be clear, we are already seeing the devastating consequences of federal immigration

enforcement in New York State. ICE agents recently entered a Columbia University residence

1 New York City Department of Investigation, Investigation into CIB Investigator Assisting with Immigration

Enforcement (Sept. 25, 2025), https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doi/reports/pdf/2025/38DOC.Release.Rpt.09.25.2025.pdf.

2 Courtney Gross, Public defenders accuse city correction department of illegal ICE coordination, NY1 (Jan. 15,

2026) available at

https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2026/01/15/public-defenders-accuse-city-correction-department-of-illegal-

ice-coordination.

3 Rashawn Ray and Gabriel R. Sanchez, ICE expansion has outpaced accountability. What are the remedies?,

Brookings Institute (Jan. 26, 2026) available at

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/ice-expansion-has-outpaced-accountability-what-are-the-remedies/; Aaron

Reichlin-Melnick, New report details ICE expanding and increasingly unaccountable detention system, American

Immigration Council (Jan. 23, 2026) available at

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/ice-expanding-detention-system/.

4 Ilse Ramirez, 6 deaths in ICE custody and 2 fatal shootings: a horrific start to 2026, American Immigration

Council (Feb. 11, 2026) available at https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/ice-deaths-shootings-2026/.after falsely posing as NYPD officers and claiming that they were searching for a missing child.5

In reality, they were seeking a student for deportation and abducted her from her residence

without a judicial warrant.6 This was not an isolated incident. Only one day before, a nearly blind

refugee who spoke very little English, was taken into US Custom and Border Patrol (CBP)

custody after being released from a county jail in Buffalo.7 CBP released the man but instead of

making sure he was safely back home, they dropped him off alone at a coffee shop miles from

safety without notifying his family or legal counsel.8 Days later, he was found frozen to death

outside.9

This unspeakable tragedy was completely preventable, as CBP deliberately decided to drop a

vulnerable man in freezing conditions miles away from home, with no regard for his life or

safety. CBP was only able to obtain custody of him because the county jail informed them of his

release.10 If the county jail did not share information with federal immigration authorities, he

would still be alive. That is why harm from city agencies sharing information with federal

immigration authorities is not abstract. In this environment, even limited information sharing or

cooperation between local agencies and federal immigration agencies can have devastating

consequences. New York City’s sanctuary protections were designed to prevent local government

from contributing to these harms, and we cannot let them fail.

The DOI findings confirm our fears: that without clear safeguards, training, and oversight,

individual staff members can circumvent our City’s protections.11 When this occurs we risk

exposing an already vulnerable population to detention, deportation, and family separation. The

DOI report highlights significant weaknesses in DOC’s policies and oversight structures

governing communication with ICE. According to the report, a DOC investigator shared

sensitive information about an individual in custody (including identifying and custodial

information) with ICE in a manner that violated our laws.12 The report claims that these

communications occurred at least in part because DOC lacked adequate safeguards to prevent

staff from engaging in unauthorized contact with federal immigration officials.13 Additionally,

DOI identified gaps in training and supervision that led to this violation.14 The fact that DOC

5 Jake Offehartz, ICE agents said to have posed a police, a tactic some fear could erode trust in real cops, AP Feb.

27, 2026) available at

https://apnews.com/article/nypd-columbia-university-immigration-c9b0cd212ab3bad901aadb3d87a551496 Id.

7 Ana Faguy, Bling refugee found dead in New York after being released by immigration authorities, BBC (Feb. 27,

2026) available at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq57j559eq4o.

8 Id.

9 Id.

10 Jon Shleton, US: Blind refugee found dead after release from custody, DW (Feb. 26, 2026) available at

https://www.dw.com/en/us-blind-refugee-found-dead-after-release-from-cbp-custody/a-76136879.

11 New York City Department of Investigation, Investigation into CIB Investigator Assisting with Immigration

Enforcement (Sept. 25, 2025), https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doi/reports/pdf/2025/38DOC.Release.Rpt.09.25.2025.pdf.

12 Id.

13 Id.

14 Id.staff were not adequately trained on the City’s sanctuary laws is deeply troubling, especially

because these protections have existed for over a decade and should be well understood across

city agencies.

We support the implementation of the recommendations outlined in the report, including

strengthening training for DOC personnel on the City’s sanctuary laws and implementing clearer

internal policies governing communication with federal immigration authorities.15 However, the

findings of the report also demonstrate that training and internal policy changes alone are

insufficient. When individual staff members are able to communicate directly with federal

immigration authorities without meaningful oversight, the City’s sanctuary policies are

vulnerable to circumvention.

II. The Council must pass legislation ending the communication loopholes between DOC

and ICE:

The DOI’s findings underscore the need for the Council to enact legislation that closes the

communication loopholes that currently exist between DOC and ICE. Our sanctuary city laws

were created to limit cooperation between local agencies and federal immigration enforcement,

particularly when no judicial warrant exists. However, DOC has adopted an interpretation of the

City’s detainer laws that allow DOC staff to communicate with immigration authorities even

when no warrant has been issued. DOC argues that they are allowed to communicate a person’s

release date, incarceration status, and court appearance dates without a judicial warrant to ICE.

We believe their interpretation of Admin. Code § 9-131 is flagrantly illegal under provision (b).

Moreover, DOC denies delaying the release of our clients so that ICE can more easily detain

them upon release, but in our experience we have noticed blatant delays in our client’s release

that are otherwise unexplainable.

DOC has also adopted a policy interpreting Admin. Code § 9-131 to treat the instant arrest as a

qualifying conviction that allows communication with ICE. We do not believe that interpretation

is consistent with the text of the law, which refers to individuals who have been convicted within

the previous five years of certain offenses, clearly indicating prior convictions rather than the

arrest that brought a person into custody.

We believe these actions are illegal and clearly inconsistent with both the purpose and the plain

intent of our laws. DOC’s actions demonstrate how agencies can exploit ambiguous language to

circumvent the City’s legal safeguards. We cannot trust DOC to address their own violations as

the communications obtained through a public records request unequivocally showed extreme

anti-immigrant sentiments within DOC as email communications to ICE from DOC used the

hashtag #teamsendthemback. That is why we are calling on the Council to enact legislation

15 Id.clarifying that DOC personnel may not communicate with immigration authorities regarding

individuals in custody except in the narrow circumstances explicitly permitted by law. Clear

statutory language will ensure that the City’s sanctuary protections are implemented as intended

and will prevent agencies from relying on interpretations that undermine those protections.

We do want to commend the current Mayor for the issuance of Executive Order 13, which

establishes new audit requirements on numerous agencies including the DOC and creates an

interagency response committee to review compliance with the City’s sanctuary laws.16

Oversight mechanisms are critical to ensure that city agencies are held accountable for adhering

to the law. The DOI report focused on isolated incidents, but revealed larger systemic issues that

are contributing to these violations. The new audit requirements under Executive Order 13 will

further build on DOI’s investigation and allow for broader and more in depth investigation of our

agencies.17

While we applaud the new audit requirements under Executive Order 13, meaningful oversight

will depend on whether all forms of communication with ICE are captured and reviewed. That is

why we were concerned to hear during the hearing testimony that DOC staff do not all have

agency email addresses. If DOC staff are communicating with ICE through channels not

documented or easily auditable (such as phone calls, text messages or other informal means)

there is a serious risk that violations of law may go undetected. At a minimum, we must ensure

that all communications between DOC personnel and federal immigration agencies go through

official, documented channels that can be reviewed for compliance.

We are grateful that the new administration is willing to take the necessary steps to ensure our

city agencies comply with our laws, especially since the previous administration refused to do

so.18 We welcome these new oversight efforts and hope that they ensure that agencies like DOC

and the NYPD will align their practices with our sanctuary laws. Legislative action from the

Council will further reinforce that expectation and ensure that the law is implemented

consistently and correctly.

That is why we urge the Council to enact legislation that would close the communication

loopholes that currently exist between DOC and ICE.

16 New York City Mayoral Executive Order No. 13 (Feb. 6, 2026) available at

https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/02/executive-order-13.17 Id.

18 To the contrary, the previous Adams’ administration tried to allow ICE officers on Rikers Island. See New York

City Mayoral Executive Order Executive Order No. 50 (April 6, 2025) available at

https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2025/04/executive-order-50.III. The Council must pass the New York City Trust Act (Int. 0209-2026)

We urge the Council to support and pass the New York City Trust Act (Int. 0209-2026), which

would strengthen accountability when city agencies violate our sanctuary laws. Under this

legislation, when an individual’s rights are violated due to local cooperation with federal

immigration authorities, they could sue the City for damages. Meaning when agencies

unlawfully honor federal detainers or share information with immigration authorities, individuals

will have legal recourse. This private right of action is critical because as we have already seen,

city agencies such as the NYPD and DOC, have violated these laws, resulting in grave harm to

immigrant communities. Allowing individuals to have a private right of action against such

illegal behavior could also incentivize the agency to start acting in better faith, for they may be

more likely to provide more information as to what is happening due to the fear of a possible

future lawsuit. Otherwise, there is no reason for DOC, or any other city agency, to adhere to a

law if there are no true repercussions for noncompliance.

For this reason, we urge the passage of the New York City Trust Act (Int. 0209-2026), which

would create a private right of action so that people wronged by violations of our already

existing laws can seek justice in courts. This bill would make sure that city agencies can be held

accountable when violations occur, helping ensure compliance with existing laws, and allowing

immigrants to feel safer during their legal proceedings.

IV . Conclusion

We thank the Council for holding an important oversight hearing and for the continued attention

to ensure that city agencies comply with our sanctuary laws. Ultimately, the DOI report offers

only a narrow glimpse into the broader problem of unlawful cooperation between city agencies

and ICE. The actions described in the report are not merely policy failures. They represent

outright violations of our laws. Without meaningful transparency and accountability, it is

impossible to know the full extent of these practices or how many similar violations have already

occurred and are occurring. For this reason we are calling on the Council to pass stronger

safeguards. The Council must act to ensure that city agencies comply with the law by passing

legislation that closes the communication loopholes between DOC and ICE and by passing the

New York City Trust Act (Int. 0209-2026), which would provide a private right of action for

individuals harmed by violations of our law.

If you have any questions about my testimony, please email policy@nycds.org.