A bipartisan group of district attorneys across New York are pushing back on the Trump administration’s efforts to strike down a state law that blocks federal immigration agents from making arrests at state courthouses.
The Department of Justice sued New York state in June, claiming its Protect Our Court Act is hampering ICE detention efforts. But in an amicus brief filed Tuesday, 20 district attorneys — Democrat and Republican, from New York to Erie County, and many rural counties in between — argued that the law is critical to their prosecutions.
“Having people feel comfortable coming forward to report crime is how we stop crime,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who co-authored the brief with Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.
The law, enacted in 2020 in response to civil immigration arrests during President Donald Trump’s first term, stops enforcement agencies such as ICE from detaining undocumented immigrants at or on their way to state courthouses. Prosecutors said those arrests often came without a proper judicial warrant.
“If people feel like they're going to come to the courthouse, and, be arrested for some civil federal immigration initiative and not give us information about a homicide or rape, assaults, thefts — that's not good for law enforcement and for safety,” Bragg said.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi called New York’s law one of several “lawless sanctuary city” policies that “prevent illegal aliens from apprehension.”
But local prosecutors — including Wayne County District Attorney Christine Callanan, an enrolled Republican — warned that “warrantless civil courthouse arrests” have created a “chilling effect” in immigrant communities by deterring witnesses and victims from coming forward in criminal cases.
“The biggest goal of any DA’s office – regardless of red or blue – is to keep the community safe, be a voice for victims, and to hold defendants accountable,” Callanan said. “This brief is just an extension of that message, which is we want to keep our community safe.”
Wayne County is known for its apple orchards and as the top fruit-producing county in New York. While Trump easily won the red-leaning county, those orchards — along with its dairy industry and other farms — rely on immigrant workers.
“With the large migrant population that we do have in the workforce,” Callanan said, the county wants “to reassure victims and witnesses that not only are we going to hear their voices and prosecute these cases, (and) that we can do so in a way that doesn't necessarily jeopardize them or their families.”
The district attorneys wrote in the brief that during the first Trump administration, immigration arrests “skyrocketed” because of changes from ICE that made “everyone a priority” for detention.
Bragg noted that hotlines to report crimes have seen fewer calls as ICE has ramped up its deportation efforts. Prosecutors also wrote that during Trump’s first term, noncitizens in Queens expressed “extreme reluctance” to come and testify in court – which impacted cases that relied especially on witness testimony, such as sexual assault and domestic violence.
“Victims of these crimes already face significant personal, financial, and societal disincentives to report their abusers’ actions,” the prosecutors wrote. “When ‘courtrooms are perceived as opportunities for ICE enforcement,’ noncitizens are deterred from showing up to court even if they have a vested interest to do so.”
