A federal judge ruled that the city officials must hand over the names and birth dates of residents living in a Bronx homeless shelter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, despite the city’s repeated attempts to block the move.
United States District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered the enforcement of the feds’ administrative subpoena Friday in a 12-page decision, stating the city “has not shown that producing this list would be unduly burdensome.”
ICE claimed the list would help in their investigation into whether any shelter residents are subject to deportation, Kaplan said in the order.
The feds narrowed their request to names of residents with “certain serious criminal histories” and agreed to appoint a special master to gather and provide only those names.
“In light of the agency’s consent to the use of a special master, and deferring to the agency’s assessment that the records are relevant to its legitimate investigation, the court thus concludes the subpoena concerns a matter which is material and relevant to the enforcement of the federal immigration laws,” Kaplan wrote.
ICE initially served the city with a subpoena in August 2025, seeking the full names and birth dates of all residents at two city shelters, but the city declined, calling it “an improper fishing expedition lacking any legitimate investigative purpose.”
The feds repeatedly revised their request, and the city still declined, saying the agency was “improperly” asking they conduct a “time-consuming” and “costly” investigation on their behalf.
The city also argued the request was “more political than investigatory, and was attempting to “circumvent and undermine” sanctuary city laws, but Kaplan disagreed.
“This speculation is unsupported by the record,” he wrote. “Although the City and the federal government do not see eye to eye on immigration policy, nothing in the record sufficiently suggests that ICE is attempting to identify migrants with serious criminal histories for any reason other than to enforce the immigration laws against them.”
The city’s sanctuary laws were passed under Mayor de Blasio in 2014. They limit communications and cooperation between federal immigration enforcement agencies and local agencies, including law enforcement.
Judge Kaplan gave the city two weeks to devise a plan for handing over the names.
The City Law Department deferred a request for comment to City Hall, which did not immediately respond.
Last month, a Brooklyn federal judge dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit to end New York City’s sanctuary protections for undocumented immigrants.
The lawsuit, filed in July 2025, sought a “permanent injunction” to eliminate local laws that bar city resources from being used in immigration enforcement and prevent city agencies, like the Department of Correction and the NYPD, from honoring civil immigration detainers placed by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and other federal agencies.
With Molly Crane-Newman