The City Council pressed officials from the correction, police and probation departments at a hearing Wednesday on whether they communicate with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement — in potential violation of city and state law.

The hearing came as immigrant advocates have raised concerns about gaps and loopholes in existing laws that may allow local law enforcement agencies to give people in their custody to ICE. In one recent case, a Ukrainian national and longtime city resident ended up in an ICE detainment facility — and on the road to deportation — after passing through custody of several different city public safety agencies and offices. 

The New York City Police Department and the probation department have no records in recent years of honoring requests from ICE to detain people so that federal agents can take custody of them, often with the aim of deporting them, according to administration officials who testified at the hearing. 

Yet the Department of Correction, which has come under rising scrutiny for record numbers of deaths on the Rikers Island jail complex, faced sustained questioning over emails dating from 2015 to 2018 that suggested some officers were emailing extensively with ICE agents. 

City and state laws require that city agencies do no more than notify ICE about the date of an inmate’s release from city custody, and only if they are either on a terrorism watchlist or have been accused or convicted of a qualifying violent or serious offense. 

In the emails, obtained by immigration advocates through a Freedom of Information Law request, one officer attempts to coordinate pick-ups for inmates with an ICE agent, signing one message “#teamsendthemback” and asking in another about when the jail facility should have an inmate ready for ICE pick-up. 

In testimony, Paul Shechtman, the department’s general counsel, said that while the emails showed “inappropriate” behavior that was “not consistent with city law,” the department had since changed its policy and no longer communicates with ICE beyond legal limits.

Councilwoman Shahana Hanif questioned Shechtman on whether the department’s “xenophobic culture” had fully adopted the policy change.

“I think ‘xenophobic culture’ is a statement that suggests it's ongoing,” Shechtman said in response. “I have no evidence of that, and, respectfully, I don’t think you have any evidence of that.”

“We hope so,” Hanif said, “because that hashtag, #teamsendthemback, doesn’t suggest that.”

Shechtman said that of 92 requests between July 2021 and June 2022 from federal immigration authorities to retain people in correction department custody on civil immigration charges, the department honored eight requests. Since July 2022, Shechtman said, the department has received 109 detainment requests and honored three of them. 

Michael Clark, the director of legislative affairs for the NYPD, said that the department has honored no requests from ICE since the start of 2022, despite receiving 1,642 such requests in that period.

Three new laws proposed by the council and discussed at the hearing would further limit communication between correction officials and ICE, limit the situations in which police can detain a person over their immigration status and allow city residents to sue individual city employees for violations of immigration detainment laws. 

Clark said that while the administration had no position on the first two laws, the third would unfairly penalize city employees who mistakenly transferred individuals to ICE custody, and put “onerous” requirements on law enforcement officials to notify residents and their attorneys about interactions with ICE.

Council members pressed administration officials on whether they planned to institute trainings to prevent city workers from accidentally, and illegally, giving someone over to ICE custody. Shechtman said that lawyers in his department review when the department should honor ICE requests, because “oftentimes it's not so easy to determine” what counts as a qualifying offense for doing so.

“It is a grave concern that there are not ongoing trainings right now to ensure compliance with the law,” said Councilman Shekar Krishnan. 

“This law is easy to comply with,” Shechtman said in response. “You simply say, ‘If it's not a qualifying offense, do not talk to ICE.’ That does not require repeated training.”