A Division of Correction officer shared real-time info with federal immigration officers concerning the launch of a person detained at Rikers Island in violation of New York Metropolis sanctuary regulation, resulting in the individual’s arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, in keeping with findings laid out by the Division of Investigation Thursday.
Whereas the report focuses on a criticism made following ICE’s arrest of a Venezuelan immigrant shortly after his launch from Rikers Island in February, it raises broader questions concerning the Division of Correction’s continued coordination with federal regulation enforcement companies as they’re conducting immigration enforcement as President Trump has deemed that an pressing precedence.
The DOI discovered that previous to its investigation, the Division of Correction had not supplied any coaching to staff about easy methods to adjust to the town’s sanctuary legal guidelines, which prohibit cooperation on civil immigration enforcement apart from restricted exceptions.
That included individuals assigned to activity forces that work with federal brokers frequently.
Employees of the Division of Correction, like sure members of the NYPD, are a part of the US Marshals Service Regional Fugitive Job Drive, the Homeland Safety Investigations Violent Gang Job Drive, and the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives Joint Firearms Job Drive, amongst others.
The DOI’s findings “recommend that DOC activity drive members could also be unintentionally aiding with civil immigration enforcement,” the report reads.
Requested concerning the DOI report, New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams — who had tried to roll again the town’s sanctuary protections by permitting ICE to reopen an workplace on Rikers Island earlier than a choose blocked that transfer — appeared unconcerned.
“The motion of the officers wasn’t intentional,” Adams stated. “He made a mistake. Human beings make errors.”
The DOI report outlines how the Division of Correction carried out new coaching on easy methods to adjust to the town’s sanctuary legal guidelines after the investigators reached out with issues this spring.
Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for Metropolis Corridor, denied any systemic points within the metropolis’s jails system, blaming the one worker for the violation cited, including the DOC is incorporating lots of the suggestions made by the DOI, together with further coaching.
“As Mayor Adams has repeatedly said, New York Metropolis doesn’t — and won’t — take part in civil immigration enforcement, in accordance with native regulation,” she wrote. “We had been upset to be taught {that a} Division of Correction worker — appearing independently and with out course or session from a supervisor — unknowingly did not observe metropolis regulation and DOC coverage associated to immigration enforcement.”
The DOI really helpful the DOC conduct a department-wide audit to make sure compliance with sanctuary legal guidelines, which the corrections division responded can be “impractical,” although it stated it has dedicated to conduct “focused opinions.”
The Metropolis Council, which has fought efforts to stroll again the town’s sanctuary protections, slammed the Adams administration.
“The violations of metropolis regulation uncovered by the Division of Investigation are a failure of the mayoral administration and company management to organize related workers for foreseeable conditions like this,” stated Rendy Desamours, a spokesperson for the Metropolis Council.
‘Doing His Job’
A collection of metropolis legal guidelines and govt orders are speculated to bar metropolis assets from getting used to additional immigration enforcement, and bar coordination with federal immigration enforcement brokers besides in circumstances the place there’s a judicial warrant and the individual has been convicted of a specified “violent or severe” offense inside a five-year span.
However advocates for immigrants have lengthy raised issues about whether or not the Division of Correction is constantly following these legal guidelines. Emails obtained over a several-year interval confirmed DOC frequently communicated with ICE round one inmate’s launch, in obvious violation of sanctuary protections, Gothamist reported in 2023.
The DOI started its probe earlier this 12 months after receiving a criticism in February, following the discharge of Cristian Jose Concepcion Manrique, a Venezuelan immigrant, from DOC custody.
Shortly after Concepcion Manrique was launched from Rikers on Feb. 3, after he served a 12 months in jail following a conviction on a third-degree assault cost for a stabbing outdoors the Corridor Avenue migrant shelter Clinton Hill, he was rapidly nabbed by ICE officers — together with his face blasted out on X by the White Home a day later.
In a assessment of safety digicam footage, DOI investigators decided that an investigator in DOC’s Correction Intelligence Bureau assigned to the federal Homeland Safety Investigations Violent Gang Job Drive had adopted Concepcion in his division car after his launch, following the MTA bus he boarded. Concepcion received off the bus shortly after it crossed the bridge again into Queens, the place he was surrounded by federal brokers with the HSI Violent Gang Job Drive, tackled to the bottom and positioned in an unmarked automotive.
Concepcion was rapidly handed off to ICE, who shuffled him to a number of detention facilities, then to Guantanamo Bay for 3 weeks, earlier than he was deported to Venezuela in April, ICE detention information recommend.
DOI interviewed the investigator, who they wrote appeared unaware he had violated metropolis sanctuary coverage. Whereas the town’s detainer regulation permits for the DOC to coordinate with immigration enforcement in sure uncommon situations, a third-degree assault conviction doesn’t meet that threshold.
Whereas the investigator was conscious that metropolis assets weren’t supposed for use for immigration enforcement, the report notes, he had, “by no means obtained any coaching or steerage from DOC about interacting with ICE brokers, easy methods to decide whether or not an ICE request concerned civil immigration enforcement, or easy methods to deal with ICE requests extra usually” and thought that every one immigration-enforcement associated requests went by way of a separate unit not associated to his work on the duty drive.
“As a member of the Violent Gang Job Drive, CIB Investigator A said that he didn’t anticipate being requested for info that may be utilized in furtherance of civil immigration enforcement,” the report reads. When he obtained a request associated to a federal “Operation Athens” he understood it to be a “felony federal conspiracy investigation,” the report provides.
In one other occasion, the DOI report discovered, the identical worker supplied info to ICE about one other individual in DOC custody whose case remains to be pending in Queens Supreme Courtroom.
“This individual mainly believed that he was doing his job,” DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber advised THE CITY. “He was requested by federal brokers to supply help. He assumed that that help had nothing to do with immigration enforcement.”
DOI performed a restricted audit of 5 e mail accounts of different DOC staff assigned to different federal activity forces, and located one different DOC worker had additionally shared a detainee’s handle and customer historical past with an ICE deportation officer this spring — one other obvious sanctuary metropolis violation.
The NYPD can also be below investigation by the DOI for potential sanctuary metropolis violations associated to its participation in federal activity forces, following a criticism lodged by the Metropolis Council in June.
In a single case that criticism describes, and which was detailed by THE CITY and Documented NY, a younger man arrested by NYPD officers assigned to a federal activity drive was then handed off to ICE and later ending up at CECOT, the infamous El Savadoran jail, although he was not charged with any crime.
In one other case, an NYPD officer supplied sealed summons information of a younger girl who was arrested outdoors Columbia College throughout pro-Palestinian protests within the spring of 2024.
That probe is ongoing, DOI officers confirmed Thursday. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch has defended the town’s participation in federal activity forces as important for public security.
Further reporting by Katie Honan.
