The Bronx District Attorney’s Office, led by Democrat Darcel Clark, instructed prosecutors to downgrade child sex crimes to prevent alien offenders from being deported.

The Bronx District Attorney’s Office, led by Democrat Darcel Clark, trained prosecutors to offer plea deals in child sex cases that leave the victim’s age out of the offense, so noncitizen defendants can avoid deportation. The finding comes from an Oct. 26 House Judiciary Committee staff report. The report found that district attorneys in all five New York City boroughs weigh immigration consequences when charging noncitizens and negotiating pleas.

The report quotes a 2019 Bronx guide on “immigration-conscious plea bargaining.” For sexual offenses against minors, the guide tells assistant district attorneys to “[o]ffer something that does not have the child’s age as an element of the crime.”

The same materials tell prosecutors to “[k]eep the firearm out of the record of conviction” in weapons cases and to “[k]eep the domestic relationship out of the record of conviction” in domestic violence cases. In stalking cases, prosecutors were told to offer a charge without “repeated instances or an intent to instill fear.” The committee wrote that Clark’s office trains prosecutors to “conceal facts from the record of conviction.”

Bronx training materials from 2023 tell prosecutors to “strive to ensure that a conviction for certain offenses does not lead to unintended and severe consequences.”

Whether the victim’s age is an element of the offense can affect whether the conviction provides grounds for deportation. Federal immigration law lists “sexual abuse of a minor” as an aggravated felony, which makes a convicted alien removable. In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that for statutory rape offenses, the federal definition “requires the age of the victim to be less than 16.”

Immigration courts assess the elements of the offense to which the defendant pleaded guilty, so a plea that leaves out the victim’s age can fall outside that category. An alien removed after an aggravated felony conviction is “permanently ineligible for a visa,” according to the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual, unless the Secretary of Homeland Security consents to a new application.

In Queens, District Attorney Melinda Katz told prosecutors to “exercise extreme caution” with noncitizen defendants and not to “get caught up in the label of [f]elonies, [m]isdemeanors.” Her office employs an immigration specialist who “helps Assistant District Attorneys navigate through plea options.”

The report cites a May 2026 email in which a Queens prosecutor told an NYPD detective that the office had “basically made a [plea] deal which is ‘immigration safe.'” In 2020, the Queens office reduced or vacated convictions in 21 cases and recommended that then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo pardon six more defendants to prevent their deportation.

In Manhattan, a January 2022 memo from District Attorney Alvin Bragg told prosecutors to “seek dispositions that avoid immigration consequences for all misdemeanors, and all felonies” where jail time was not generally expected. Bragg’s office said the policy is “outdated” and was replaced with case-by-case discretion.

Since 2017, the Brooklyn office of District Attorney Eric Gonzalez has trained staff to “avoid disproportionate collateral consequences, such as deportation.” The Staten Island office of District Attorney Michael McMahon called the report “flagrantly false and patently political.”

The report also accuses Clark of encouraging pleas to “nonexistent, legally impossible” crimes such as “attempted reckless assault.” New York courts nevertheless allow negotiated pleas to hypothetical offenses. State data obtained by the Immigrant Defense Project, an immigrant legal advocacy group, show 289 convictions for attempted reckless assault citywide from 2015 through 2025, including 50 in the Bronx.

On Oct. 29, Katz, Gonzalez and New York Attorney General Letitia James held a press conference on gun seizures. A reporter asked whether any of them had ordered prosecutors to downgrade charges to keep illegal immigrants in the country. None directly answered the question.

The next day, Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) sent James a letter asking whether her office had directed or approved changes to firearm charges or conviction records to reduce immigration consequences.

The plea guidance comes on top of the city’s refusal to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The NYPD received 20,255 ICE detainer requests from July 2018 through June 2026 and honored none. Of those requests, 9,645 came between July 2025 and June 2026. During that same one-year period, the city Department of Correction declined all 2,852 detainers it received.

In March, the Manhattan DA’s office reached a plea deal with Nicol Alexandra Contreras-Suarez, a Colombian illegal alien. Contreras-Suarez was charged with first-degree rape for assaulting a 14-year-old boy in an East Harlem bodega bathroom and pleaded guilty to second-degree rape. A judge promised a six-month sentence with credit for time served.

The DA’s office said it expected the defendant “to remain detained and be deported following sentencing due to the felony conviction.” Although the case involved a reduced charge and a short anticipated sentence, the office’s statement indicates that it expected the conviction to result in deportation.

The practice of considering immigration consequences extends beyond New York. In September 2025, then-Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares accused Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano of considering immigration status in charging and plea decisions.

In one case Miyares cited, Guatemalan national Ander Josue Cortez Mendez was charged with carnal knowledge of a 13- or 14-year-old. The charge was reclassified as “consensual sex w/ child 15y+,” and Cortez Mendez served no jail time.

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In another case, Descano sought a plea capped at two years for Honduran national Hyrum Baquedano Rodriguez, who was charged with abduction with intent to defile a 4-year-old girl. Two judges refused the plea, and ICE arrested Baquedano Rodriguez after the charges were dropped.

At a May 2026 House Judiciary subcommittee hearing, Descano disputed lawmakers’ account of the cases, according to Rep. Brad Knott.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division opened an investigation of Descano’s plea policy on May 6, 2026, stating that it “has reached no conclusions.” Six months later, no findings have been announced, and Descano remains in office.

In May 27 letters to the five New York City district attorneys, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and Rep. Tom McClintock requested every case since 2016 in which an alien defendant was allowed to replead, a conviction was reduced or vacated, or a pardon was recommended to the governor. The committee calls its Oct. 26 document an interim report and wrote that “New York and its leaders are not outliers.”