Rep. Daniel Goldman challenged Republicans to cite a single case where a sanctuary city failed to turn over a convicted criminal illegal immigrant to federal authorities, and the Department of Homeland Security responded with a list of thousands from his own state.
Goldman, a Democrat representing Lower Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn, made the demand during a House markup session on a bill that would make President Donald Trump's border security executive orders permanent law. Addressing Republican colleagues who had criticized sanctuary policies, Goldman insisted that cities and states cooperating under those policies hand over convicted illegal immigrants to DHS once they finish their sentences.
The claim did not survive the afternoon. DHS provided Fox News Digital with statistics showing that New York alone had released 6,947 criminally convicted illegal immigrants since January because the state refused to honor ICE detainer requests. The department cited at least 12 individual cases by name, and the crime categories behind those releases paint a picture Goldman never addressed.
Goldman's remarks came after Reps. Darrell Issa of California and Tom McClintock of California discussed the immigration system during the markup. Goldman took issue with Issa's invocation of Ellis Island's processing of European immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, noting that his own grandmother came through the facility, the New York State portion of which sits in his congressional district.
He pushed back hard on the comparison:
"First of all, my grandmother also came through Ellis Island. There was no immigration law at that time. And certainly there was no NCIS where you could look at a database and figure out whether someone has a criminal record from their own country."
Goldman then claimed that 98% of those who passed through Ellis Island were admitted to the country and argued the facility should not be held up as a model of orderly immigration processing. But it was his next statement that drew the sharpest response.
He challenged Republicans directly:
"Sanctuary cities, I ask you please cite one case where there was a criminal conviction, the defendant served his time and was convicted of a removable offense under the Immigration & Nationality Act of 1952 and he was not turned over by the city or the state to the Department of Homeland Security."
Goldman pressed further, predicting his opponents would come up empty.
"You have not and are unable to provide one is my guess. Maybe you'll have one or two, but the policy of sanctuary cities and sanctuary states is that if you are removable after you're convicted after you complete your sentence, you are turned over to the Department of Homeland Security."
Assistant DHS Secretary Lauren Bis did not offer "one or two" cases. She offered thousands. Bis told Fox News Digital that since January, New York had released 6,947 criminally convicted illegal immigrants because the state would not honor ICE detainer requests, the formal notices asking local jails to hold an individual briefly so federal agents can take custody.
The crimes tied to those released individuals, as Bis laid them out, were not minor infractions:
"The crimes of these aliens include 29 homicides, 2,509 assaults, 199 burglaries, 305 robberies, 392 dangerous drug offenses, 300 weapons offenses and 207 sexual predatory offenses."
Bis said approximately 7,000 illegal immigrants in New York had active detainer requests as of last winter. She did not hold back about where the blame falls.
"Sanctuary politicians must stop putting politics above public safety. This type of insanity leads to more crimes and more innocent victims."
DHS also identified at least 12 specific individuals released by New York authorities despite active ICE detainers. Among them: Selman Cevik, a Turkish national on the Known or Suspected Terrorist list, arrested on a first-degree menacing charge. New York City released him. ICE later tracked him down on its own.
Another case involved a Dominican national arrested for attempted murder in the Bronx. New York released him. ICE apprehended him last September.
A third case: a member of the Crips street gang with a prior assault conviction, arrested in August on a criminal weapons possession charge. Released despite a detainer request.
Before DHS weighed in publicly, Rep. Brad Knott, a Republican from North Carolina and a former prosecutor, pushed back on Goldman's framing during the markup itself. Knott pointed to his own experience handling cases involving illegal immigrants in sanctuary-leaning jurisdictions.
"Sanctuary jurisdictions do have a very wide paradigm in how they're operated. There's some sanctuary-leaning jurisdictions in my home state of North Carolina. We had to pass a law at the state legislature to override the discretion."
Knott also cited recent cases in Fairfax County, Virginia, where a sanctuary-leaning jurisdiction had failed to cooperate with ICE after convictions. North Carolina's state legislature eventually passed a law stripping local jurisdictions of the discretion to ignore federal detainer requests, an acknowledgment that the problem Goldman denied was real enough to require a legislative fix.
Goldman's claim during the markup did not come in a vacuum. The congressman has positioned himself as one of the most vocal Democratic opponents of federal immigration enforcement operations in New York City.
He formally wrote to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch urging the department to arrest and prosecute ICE agents who, in Goldman's view, engage in unlawful actions during enforcement operations. Just The News reported that Goldman argued federal agents had been violating constitutional rights by detaining U.S. citizens and lawful residents without proper legal authority. "No person, regardless of their badge, should be permitted to assault or unlawfully detain any New Yorker without facing consequences," Goldman wrote. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem responded that ICE agents "are facing ambushes, drone surveillance, and death threats, all because they dare to enforce the laws passed by Congress."
Goldman also called for an investigation into a November 12 ICE operation in northern Manhattan that left two NYPD officers injured. The Washington Examiner reported that residents had called police after seeing armed individuals in sweatshirts apprehending people without visible federal identification. Goldman argued ICE's failure to identify agents in the field created dangerous public safety risks and asked whether NYPD had protocols for responding to unidentified federal agents.
And after the Minneapolis ICE shooting, Goldman pushed back against DHS and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller for labeling the driver's actions "domestic terrorism." Breitbart reported Goldman said, "Even if the officer were run over, it's not domestic terrorism." He also accused Miller of "inciting untrained thugs to murder Americans."
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, meanwhile, has made clear the federal government sees New York's sanctuary policies as the direct cause of escalating enforcement. Newsmax reported Lyons saying, "You will see an increase in ICE arrests because there are so many criminal illegal aliens that have been released in New York specifically, and especially have been harbored in New York for the lack of cooperation there in New York City." Goldman dismissed those operations as "a mass deportation dragnet" using "excessive force to indiscriminately detain and arrest non-violent individuals."
The pattern Goldman denied during the markup, convicted criminals released instead of turned over to ICE, has played out publicly and repeatedly. The New York Post detailed the case of Rafael Andres Rubio Bohorquez, a Venezuelan national working as a New York City Council data analyst, who was detained by ICE. Democratic officials including the city's mayor publicly condemned the arrest. DHS then revealed that Bohorquez had entered the country on a tourist visa in 2017 and never left, a federal crime, and had been arrested in Queens in March 2023 on an assault charge. He also allegedly signed an employment form claiming he had never been arrested, which would have been false.
Goldman's claim rests on a narrow legal premise: that sanctuary cities turn over convicted illegal immigrants who have completed their sentences and are removable under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. DHS's response suggests the opposite is happening on a scale Goldman either did not know about or chose not to acknowledge. Nearly 7,000 convicted illegal immigrants walked out of New York custody since January with active ICE detainers hanging over them. Twenty-nine of the crimes tied to those individuals were homicides. More than 200 were sexual predatory offenses.
Fox News Digital reached out to Goldman for comment. The source did not indicate whether he responded.
Goldman asked for one case. He got thousands. The question now is whether he has an answer for the victims behind those numbers, or whether the challenge was never meant to survive contact with the facts.
