Oversight Committee Releases Memorandum Exposing Reckless Sanctuary Policies’ Impact on Public Safety and Taxpayers

WASHINGTON––Today, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a staff memorandum that analyzes how policies that shield criminal illegal aliens from federal immigration enforcement threaten public safety, drain resources paid for by American taxpayers, and encourage illegal immigration. It builds on a year-long Committee investigation into the open-border policies of the Biden-Harris Administration and key left-wing sanctuary jurisdictions’ refusal to allow state and local law enforcement to cooperate with federal officials carrying out their duties to enforce immigration laws. 

“Sanctuary policies only provide sanctuaries for criminal illegal aliens. These reckless policies are a clear and present danger to Americans across the country and turn every state into a border state. Democrat leaders in sanctuary jurisdictions have made it clear that they have no intention of cooperating with federal immigration authorities and will protect criminal illegal aliens over the American people. These policies also allow illegal aliens to drain taxpayer-funded resources and encourage more illegal immigration. Congress must work alongside President Trump to protect the public from further abuses by lawless sanctuary cities and states. The House Oversight Committee will continue to expose waste, fraud, and abuse in sanctuary jurisdictions,” said Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.).

Last year, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing with four sanctuary mayors: Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams. It also held a hearing with three sanctuary governors: Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

Below are key findings from the interim memorandum:

• Sanctuary jurisdictions protect criminal illegal aliens at the expense of public safety: Sanctuary jurisdictions ignore lawful detainers lodged by federal officials for removable aliens in local custody, refusing to release those aliens—who have been arrested for crimes—in a safe custodial environment to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. Many of these released criminal aliens have become recidivists implicated in further criminal activity, including violent crimes against American citizens, lawful aliens, and other illegal aliens. As of July 21, 2024, there were 662,566 illegal aliens “with criminal histories” free in the United States. This number only includes criminal aliens known to ICE officials.
• American taxpayers bear an unsustainable financial burden from sanctuary policies: Under the Biden-Harris Administration, the federal government spent over $1.45 billion to reimburse local jurisdictions and nongovernmental organizations providing travel, shelter, and other services to illegal aliens encountered and released by law enforcement components of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As of the most recent 2022 estimates, the net annual cost of illegal immigration to the United States, even after accounting for any state and federal taxes actually paid by illegal immigrants, is over $150 billion. 
• Sanctuary policies enable a humanitarian crisis affecting vulnerable children while creating broader public safety threats: As revealed in a shocking March 25, 2025 report from the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG), the Biden-Harris Administration’s permissive immigration policies created a humanitarian crisis that left over 233,000 unaccompanied alien children (UACs) without proper legal oversight and vulnerable to exploitation. Of these unaccompanied alien children, over 31,000 were released to sponsor addresses that were blank, undeliverable, or incomplete, while more than 43,000 failed to appear for court hearings and are now effectively missing from federal monitoring.
• Sanctuary policies create easily avoidable operational failures that endanger communities nationwide: The principal tactic used by sanctuary jurisdictions has been to deny that they are, in fact, sanctuary jurisdictions. As demonstrated through testimony before the Committee, sanctuary city mayors and sanctuary state governors publicly insist that they would cooperate with ICE requests for custodial transfers of illegal aliens, if only—crucially—ICE tenders a judicial criminal warrant as opposed to an administrative warrant. Sanctuary jurisdictions erroneously maintain that only judge-issued criminal warrants, which are entirely inapplicable to the immigration enforcement context, are legally sufficient to hold a removable illegal alien despite clear language in the Immigration and Nationality Act permitting administrative warrants, and despite caselaw dating back more than half a century approving of immigration officers’ power of arrest using administrative warrants authorized by statute. The position of sanctuary jurisdictions is therefore demonstrably false: an obstructionist tactic dressed up in legal jargon.

• Congress must act to address the persistent issue of lawless sanctuary policies: The Committee’s interim findings support the need for further legislation to build on President Trump’s progress to restore effective immigration enforcement and ensure that state and local governments cannot continue to obstruct federal law and endanger public safety. The Committee recommends imposing criminal sanctions on officials within sanctuary cities and states who engage in harboring illegal aliens and obstructing justice, enacting reforms for processing and removing unaccompanied children, reviewing federal funding for cities and states that prioritize protecting criminal aliens over Americans, enhancing information sharing requirements between state, local, and federal law enforcement bodies to enhance immigration enforcement, and continuing oversight of federal immigration policies to ensure they are faithfully executed. 

Read the staff memorandum here.