Judge Throws Out Justice Department Suit Against New York City's Sanctuary Laws, Leaving ICE Detainers Unanswered

A Brooklyn federal judge has dismissed the Justice Department’s suit against New York City’s sanctuary laws, so the NYPD will keep declining ICE detainers and ICE will keep making those arrests on its own.

U.S. District Judge Ramón E. Reyes Jr. on Thursday dismissed United States v. City of New York, the Trump administration’s July 2025 challenge to the city laws that stop police and jail officials from holding people for ICE or sharing their release dates and custody details without a judicial warrant. The decision leaves those policies in force for anyone arrested in the city, and it is at least the third time since July 2025 that a federal judge has dismissed a Justice Department suit against sanctuary protections in New York or Illinois.

The suit, brought under the Supremacy Clause, the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Laken Riley Act, was the administration’s main legal lever against the city, and the ruling comes a week after ICE agents shot Oscar Belgal, a Dominican immigrant, in his car in the city, a case DHS defends by saying he “weaponized his vehicle” against agents. It answers the legal question behind the detainer figures examined here on Oct. 10.

State law did the work before the city code ever mattered

The more consequential holding is about standing. According to Reuters, Reyes found the government could not challenge the city law barring police from detaining people at federal request, because state law already forbids that. That rule comes from People ex rel. Wells v. DeMarco, a 2018 New York appellate decision holding that local officers lack state-law authority to hold someone solely on a civil immigration detainer. Strike the city ordinance and the NYPD still could not honor a detainer, so a federal win would change nothing. The practical effect is that the real barrier to ICE holds in New York is state law, which this lawsuit never targeted.

On the merits, Courthouse News reported, Reyes rejected the express, conflict and field preemption theories because the federal statutes involved do not regulate private actors, the test the Supreme Court applied in Murphy v. NCAA in 2018. Even if the government had standing, he wrote, “its preemption claims fail,” finding “nothing within federal law that obligates states to participate in federal immigration enforcement.”

The information-sharing claim ran into a narrow statute. The main federal sharing law, 8 U.S.C. 1373, protects exchanges of a person’s “citizenship or immigration status.” It says nothing about release dates or whereabouts, which is what the city withholds, and Reuters reported that Reyes upheld those limits because federal law does not require such sharing.

What the detainer numbers show, and the argument on the other side

The NYPD received 9,645 ICE detainers between July 2025 and June 2026, up from 3,672 the year before, an increase of about 163 percent based on NYPD figures. It honored none.

Supporters of the lawsuit say those refusals do real damage. Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors lower immigration levels, wrote a day before the ruling that refusing detainers blocks most interior enforcement, since by his count about 68.4 percent of roughly 2.086 million ICE interior arrests from fiscal 2009 through the third quarter of fiscal 2018 began in a jail or prison. The answer from the courts has been consistent: a detainer is a request signed by an immigration officer, not a warrant signed by a judge, and localities may decline it. Judge Lindsay Jenkins dismissed the Justice Department’s suit against Illinois, Chicago and Cook County in July 2025, and Judge Mae D’Agostino dismissed its challenge to New York’s Protect Our Courts Act in November 2025.

What it means for people arrested in New York City

For a noncitizen arrested in the city, the ruling does not change whether ICE finds out: fingerprints taken at booking go to the FBI and are shared with DHS. What it settles, for now, is that the NYPD will not hold that person past release or hand them over on a detainer. ICE can still make the arrest itself at a home, a workplace or on the street, the kind of encounter in which Belgal was shot. Lawful status is no shield: a green card or visa holder arrested on a charge that could make them removable can still draw a detainer and an at-large arrest.

Neither outlet reported whether the government will appeal; the Justice Department did not immediately respond to Reuters, and DHS and the White House did not immediately respond to Courthouse News. An appeal would go to the Second Circuit, where the standing holding is likely to be the hardest part to overcome, since it rests on New York law a federal court cannot rewrite. That leaves the administration’s more realistic levers outside this case: conditions on federal grants and more at-large arrests.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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