New York has refused 16,070 ICE detainers covering criminal illegal immigrants since January 2025, DHS reports, leaving offenders free while state leaders block federal removals.
Department of Homeland Security officials released data showing New York refused to honor 16,070 Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers from January 20, 2025, through October 8, 2026. The holds targeted illegal immigrants already charged or convicted of crimes.
Breitbart News reported that the refusals kept more than 16,000 criminal illegal immigrants from ICE custody since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025. Among those cases sat more than 52,000 criminal charges and convictions.
The offense list is not minor traffic paper. DHS figures tied the refused detainers to murder, kidnapping, sex crimes, drunk driving, burglary, robbery, weapons offenses, drug possession, and assault. Local jails processed the arrests. Federal immigration holds never got honored.
That gap is the story. ICE flags someone already in custody for removal. New York declines the handoff. The person walks back into the community while agents start from scratch.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin tied the numbers to state and city officials who will not help enforce immigration law. He named New York Mayor Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul directly.
Mullin said:
"While sanctuary politicians continue to release dangerous criminals onto their streets, our brave law enforcement officers will continue to risk their lives to arrest these heinous criminals and make America safe again,"
He added a short line on the legal baseline:
"Illegal aliens have no sanctuary in America."
And he put the non-cooperation in plain terms:
"We enforce these laws with no help from Mayor Mamdani and Governor Hochul,"
Mullin’s closing pitch pressed local officials to reverse course rather than keep blocking removals.
"The Trump administration is committed to protecting the American people in every city and every state, and we won’t let sanctuary politicians stand in our way. If you’re a state or local politician, your best bet is to cooperate with us so we can all make America safe again."
The secretary’s framing matches the policy fight already visible in New York, including earlier clashes when the Trump administration rejected Mamdani’s demand to freeze ICE after violence in the Bronx. Federal agents still have to chase people local systems decline to hold.
DHS released the statewide detainer figures on Monday. Last week’s case made the cost concrete. Two illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic stand accused of stabbing an off-duty New York Police Department officer. Both remain at large.
DHS officials said NYPD had already arrested the pair earlier. They were released from jail before ICE agents could lodge a detainer. After that release, the stabbing accusation followed. The suspects were still free when DHS spoke.
Officials also stated both men had been released into the United States under the Biden administration. First came entry. Then a local arrest. Then a release before ICE could lock in a hold. Then a violent allegation and a manhunt.
That sequence is the operational failure the 16,070 figure measures at scale. A detainer is a request to keep someone in custody long enough for federal pickup. When the request is refused, ICE loses the one moment the person is already behind a locked door.
New York readers have seen the same enforcement collision in street-level reporting on Bronx clashes after an ICE agent wounded a wanted illegal immigrant during a targeted arrest. The pattern is consistent: federal officers move on criminal targets while city and state politics treat cooperation as optional.
The DHS data does not describe paperwork disputes over civil status alone. It describes people already tagged with serious criminal dockets. More than 52,000 charges and convictions rode with the refused detainers, spanning violent crime, sex offenses, weapons cases, robbery, burglary, assault, drug possession, and drunk driving.
Each refused hold is a separate decision point. Someone is in local custody. ICE asks for time. The state does not give it. Multiply that choice 16,070 times across the Trump term window DHS published, and the backlog becomes a public-safety ledger, not an abstract immigration argument.
DHS did not publish a full offense-by-offense breakdown in the material reported Monday. The category list still lands hard. Murder and kidnapping are not quality-of-life citations. Sex crimes and weapons offenses are not paperwork errors. Drunk driving and assault put strangers at risk on ordinary streets.
Critics of New York’s non-cooperation have pressed this point before. When a New York Democrat dared critics to name one sanctuary-city failure, DHS answered with thousands of cases. Monday’s statewide detainer total extends that same accountability file.
Mullin did not criticize anonymous bureaucrats. He named the governor and the mayor as the officials offering “no help” on enforcement. Neither Hochul nor Mamdani is quoted in the DHS release package responding to the 16,070 figure. The secretary’s charge stands as a direct public accusation of non-cooperation.
In practical terms, ICE detainers depend on local jails and police lockups. Federal agents cannot sit in every precinct. When state policy treats those holds as optional, the transfer window closes and the person exits through the same door as any other release.
That is why the Trump administration has kept grinding on detention authority in court as well as on the street, including the push captured when the administration asked the Supreme Court to revive an immigration detention fight after a Hochul pardon wiped out an earlier case. Policy at the top shapes whether criminal illegal immigrants stay in custody long enough to be removed.
Monday’s data window runs from Inauguration week in 2025 through October 8, 2026. It covers the early Trump term in a single statewide count. New York’s refusals are not a one-week spike. They are a sustained practice measured in five-digit volume.
The stabbing case sits inside that practice. Prior NYPD arrests. Jail release before a detainer could be lodged. A later accusation that an off-duty officer was stabbed. Suspects still free. Biden-era release into the country at the front of the timeline. Local non-cooperation in the middle. Violence and an open manhunt at the back.
Mullin’s message to state and local politicians was not subtle. Cooperate so removals can finish, or keep owning the releases. DHS says it will keep sending officers to make the arrests either way. The 16,070 figure is what non-cooperation looks like on a spreadsheet. The at-large stabbing suspects are what it can look like on a city block.
Taxpayers fund the jails, the cops, and the emergency rooms. They also fund the federal agents sent back into the same neighborhoods to re-find people who were already in custody once. When a state refuses thousands of detainers on criminal illegal immigrants, it is not shielding the vulnerable. It is shielding the docket.
