ALBANY, NY and TRENTON, NJ — Free Speech For People, a national nonpartisan legal advocacy organization, today submitted requests urging New York Attorney General Letitia James, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, the District Attorneys of New York and Erie Counties, and the County Prosecutors of Essex, Hudson, Burlington, and Middlesex Counties to open criminal investigations into the unlawful actions of federal agents operating in New York and New Jersey.

The submissions detail a consistent pattern of criminal activity by federal agents across New York and New Jersey over the last year, including unlawful detentions, violent assaults, kidnappings, and racially motivated targeting of communities of color, as part of the Trump Administration’s immigration operations.

Despite public rhetoric claiming that immigration enforcement targets the “worst of the worst,” over 90% of the detainees in New Jersey’s Delaney Hall have no criminal record. Instead, Free Speech For People’s letters state that these acts were part of a coordinated criminal conspiracy directed by President Donald Trump and senior administration officials, intended not to enforce federal law but to punish and terrorize immigrants and political opponents.

“When New Jersey’s elected officials attempted to audit detention facilities, they were arrested,” said Courtney Hostetler, Legal Director for Free Speech For People. “When elected officials have attempted to record ICE officers in public, they have been threatened with arrest. This is not about immigration enforcement—it is about silencing political opposition.”

Federal agents engaged in a series of violent and unlawful actions, including:

• Detaining individuals without cause;
• Hiring unqualified political supporters to run a detention facility in Newark at Delaney Hall, leading to the death of at least one detainee and the abuse of countless others. Detainees are denied access to beds, potable water, adequate medical care; are not able to contact their lawyers; and are subject to racist abuse by guards;
• Holding immigration detainees at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan for an average of 32 hours in a facility designed for less than 12-hour stays, denying detainees access to private toilets, beds, showers, or adequate medical care.
• Shoving and otherwise interfering with journalists who document arrests;
• Leaving a blind, elderly refugee who spoke no English at a closed coffee shop at night in the middle of winter in Buffalo, New York with no way of contacting his family; he was found dead, miles away, five days later.

“When federal actors or contractors lack the authority to take an action or when their actions were not reasonable under the circumstances, states may prosecute them if those unauthorized or unnecessary actions violate state criminal law,” said Ben Clements, Chairman and Senior Legal Advisor at Free Speech For People and a former federal prosecutor. “That includes officials who gave the orders, including the President himself.”

Free Speech For People emphasizes that while federal prosecutors have been compromised by the administration’s own misconduct, state and local authorities retain independent jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute crimes committed within their borders.

“The federal government has not just failed to conduct oversight of its own agents; it has prosecuted, arrested, or threatened to arrest state officials who have attempted to document federal abuse,” said Ben Horton, Counsel at Free Speech For People. “State criminal investigations and prosecutions are one of the few tools available for public officials to hold this administration to account.”

Read the New York letter here.

Read the New Jersey letter here.