A New York City investigator violated sanctuary laws that limit information sharing between local officials and the federal government by providing details about two immigrants held in city jails, according to a report released by a city watchdog agency on Thursday.
The report found that a Department of Correction investigator provided information about two detainees to Department of Homeland Security agents on two occasions, in late 2024 and in February 2025, helping federal officials arrest one of the detainees after his release from jail.
In February, the investigator provided federal agents with real-time information about the release of the detainee, Cristian Concepcion, a Venezuelan man who had been convicted of third-degree assault, a misdemeanor, and was being held at the Rikers Island jail complex.
The information helped federal agents detain Mr. Concepcion shortly after he got off a bus exiting Rikers Island on Feb. 3. He was charged with entering the country illegally and was sent to a federal immigration detention center, the report said. Federal agents did not present a formal request for his transfer or a judicial warrant, which are typically required under sanctuary laws for city officials to assist federal authorities, the report said.
Though the 68-page report, issued by the Department of Investigation, was narrowly focused on the actions of one investigator, whose mistakes were cast as unintentional, it blamed the administration of Mayor Eric Adams for not properly training jail officials on how and when they can share information about noncitizens with immigration authorities.
The report found that the investigator, who worked closely with federal agents on a task force focused on violent gangs, was unaware that the assistance he was providing was largely prohibited under the sanctuary laws. His assistance would have been allowed in a criminal investigation.
Jocelyn E. Strauber, the commissioner of the Department of Investigation, said that the investigator had “unwittingly” violated the law, and that the Department of Correction had “failed to provide proper guidance and training to D.O.C. staff about how to comply with city law and D.O.C.’s own policy while maintaining critical law enforcement partnerships with federal agencies.”
The report recommended seven steps the Adams administration could take to address any systemic failures and prevent future breaches of the laws, including more robust guidance and training.
Kayla Mamelak Altus, a spokeswoman for Mr. Adams, said the city had already carried out most of the recommendations “to ensure incidents like this do not happen again.”
“As Mayor Adams has repeatedly stated, New York City does not — and will not — participate in civil immigration enforcement, in accordance with local law,” she said. “We were disappointed to learn that a Department of Correction employee — acting independently and without direction or consultation from a supervisor — unknowingly failed to follow city law and D.O.C. policy related to immigration enforcement.”
The report comes as cities with sanctuary laws, which limit cooperation between local officials and federal immigration authorities, have been targeted by the Trump administration. President Trump has argued that such laws fuel crime and obstruct the deportation of undocumented immigrants whom the federal government deems a threat to public safety.
Democratic leaders have championed sanctuary laws as necessary to ensure that undocumented immigrants can interact with city services — including the police, schools and hospitals — without fear that doing so could lead to their deportation.
Mr. Adams, a Democrat running for re-election as an independent, has expressed support for the spirit of the sanctuary laws but has argued that they are too restrictive. He has said that city officials should be allowed to collaborate more closely with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to go after undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes.
In April, after consulting with top Trump officials, his administration issued an executive order to allow ICE to reopen an office on Rikers Island; the agency had been barred from the jail under sanctuary laws that were passed in 2014. But the City Council successfully sued to block the plan, with a judge ruling in September that the move was illegal. The judge said that there was the “appearance of a conflict of interest” because the Trump administration had dropped federal corruption charges against the mayor as it sought his assistance with the president’s immigration agenda.
New York’s sanctuary laws, which were greatly expanded under Mayor Bill de Blasio, all but prohibit the city’s police and jails from helping ICE agents deport undocumented immigrants. Jail officials are allowed to transfer to ICE custody only those detainees who have been convicted of “violent or serious” crimes — a list of more than 170 crimes that includes rape and murder.
The report issued on Thursday did not find a systematic violation of the laws, but the investigation appeared to show the complexities that city officials face when trying to abide by the sanctuary laws while also collaborating with the federal government on criminal matters.
Mr. Concepcion, the Venezuelan immigrant, had been jailed on June 7, 2024, in connection with the stabbing of another migrant outside a Brooklyn shelter last year, according to The New York Post.
He had been charged with attempted murder but pleaded guilty to a lesser assault charge that was not among the serious crimes that would have allowed jail officials to help ICE apprehend him upon his release in February.
The city investigator who provided federal agents with information about Mr. Concepcion told the Department of Investigation that he believed that the federal agents wanted to arrest Mr. Concepcion in connection with a “federal conspiracy investigation” targeting a Venezuelan gang, not to arrest him for an immigration violation.
On Feb. 3, according to surveillance footage cited in the report, about seven federal agents tackled Mr. Concepcion to the ground at a bus stop by the Rikers Island jail entrance and placed him inside an unmarked vehicle.
His arrest was promoted by the White House in a post on X the next day, accusing him of belonging to Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan street gang.
Luis Ferré-Sadurní is a Times reporter covering immigration in the New York region.
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