In March, a federal investigator asked the New York Police Department for information about a woman who had been arrested during a pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University and was now detained for overstaying her visa.
The woman, Leqaa Kordia, 32, was being investigated for money laundering, the investigator said, and the Department of Homeland Security needed help. The police handed over her birth date, address and the name of a possible associate. An officer also provided the woman’s sealed arrest report.
But a month later, during an immigration court hearing, the only evidence of money laundering that federal prosecutors presented was a $1,000 MoneyGram transfer that Ms. Kordia had sent to relatives in Gaza.
The judge, Tara Naselow-Nahas, was unimpressed.
“Based on the evidence, I do not find that the respondent poses a danger to the United States,” she said and ordered that Ms. Kordia be released on a $20,000 bond. Ms. Kordia remains at the Prairieland Detention Facility in Texas as prosecutors seek a reversal of the decision.
But the judge’s ruling and questions about the federal government’s credibility have civil libertarians asking whether the Police Department should reconsider its cooperation with the Trump administration.
The city’s sanctuary laws forbid the department from divulging information in immigration cases, which are civil matters, but the police often cooperate with federal authorities on criminal cases, usually in joint investigations into crimes like sex trafficking, drug and gun dealing, and terrorism.
Ms. Kordia’s case is the rarer instance in which federal agents have asked about a criminal inquiry that does not involve a joint investigation. In those cases, the department also expects officers to cooperate, vetting requests through superiors and maintaining a record of information released. But the department has no written guidelines or procedures for assessing such requests beyond a brief description.
Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch said Thursday that the police were watching closely to ensure that federal officials were truthful, but that cooperation with agencies like Homeland Security Investigations and the F.B.I. was crucial to keeping New Yorkers safe from terrorism, trafficking and transnational crime.
“Some have asked whether we should reconsider our cooperation with federal agencies on criminal investigations in light of their work with ICE,” she said during a budget hearing before the City Council, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. “The short, straight answer to this is no.”
“The only way these investigations are successful is by N.Y.P.D. detectives working seamlessly with federal agents on a daily basis,” she added.
But some say the department must ask more and harder questions. They contend that a long-established trust has been breached because federal authorities, struggling to meet President Trump’s demands to deport as many immigrants as possible, are misleading — even lying — to local law enforcement officers and judges.
“The N.Y.P.D. should think through its own systems and its own processes,” said Anne Venhuizen, senior staff attorney for the Bronx Defenders, which represents the indigent in court. “They are potentially violating sanctuary laws by not having a more fulsome practice of verifying that the information they’re getting is accurate.”
Local police officers in other states, predominantly in the South, have cooperated for years as ICE has apprehended people accused of immigration violations. Now, other states are falling in line with Mr. Trump’s demands. On May 22, Gov. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire signed two bills requiring police departments to help ICE.
New York and other cities with sanctuary laws, such as Boston and Chicago, have a trickier path, cooperating on criminal matters but not civil immigration. And events in recent months have cast a shadow on the actions of federal law enforcement.
In March, a judge approved a warrant for ICE agents to search for Yunseo Chung, a Columbia junior who had participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The decision was based on an agent’s sworn statement that the university was breaking a federal law that prohibited the harboring of “removable aliens.” But Ms. Chung is a permanent resident, and her lawyers accused ICE of lying to the judge.
In April, the federal government sued the City of Rochester, in New York, after its Police Department ordered more training for officers who had helped ICE agents handcuff immigrants. City officials have said that immigration officers lied when they called the police on March 24 and said they needed help with an emergency stop on a city road.
In January, police officers in Millcreek, Utah, suspected that ICE agents were lying when they said they had stopped an American man because he had tried to hit them with his car. In fact, the man said, he had honked while the agents were detaining a woman and they pulled him over and pointed a gun at him.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment on the cases.
“This federal government has completely blurred the lines between valid criminal enforcement and immigration enforcement,” said Meghna Philip, director of special litigation at the Legal Aid Society in New York City. “In our present reality, if anything, there should be a presumption of noncooperation with immigration authorities.”
The New York police said that the federal agent who had asked about Ms. Kordia had provided contact information, as well as a name, shield number and case number, and they believed that was sufficient. Commissioner Tisch said Thursday that she had put federal agencies on notice.
“I am nobody’s fool,” she said. “If we were to find that a federal agency had not been honest with us, if we were told that a records request was for a criminal investigation, but in fact that was not true, then that would be a tremendous breach of our trust. And we would need to reconsider how we do business with that federal agency. I have been very upfront about that with all our federal partners.”
Homeland Security Investigations did not return repeated requests for comment.
Pushing back on federal requests would harm cooperation that flourished after the Sept. 11 attacks, said Christopher Mercado, a retired New York police lieutenant who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
But, he said, “I’m going to be honest with you: The feds may not always be transparent with the P.D.”
Federal investigators may fear that giving too much information could compromise an investigation or a confidential informant, he said. Historically, local police officers have accepted that.
“Those relationships are always going to be important and we don’t want to burn them,” Mr. Mercado said.
Ms. Kordia, a waitress from Paterson, N.J., who came to the United States from the West Bank in 2016 and lived with her mother, an American citizen, has not been charged with any crimes and is accused only of overstaying her visa.
She went to the demonstration in New York on April 30, 2024. She was accused of blocking a gate and arrested with dozens of other protesters, according to a police report that also said she had no record of criminal complaints or investigations. The report was sealed after her case was dismissed.
Court records filed by Ms. Kordia’s lawyers suggest that agents with Homeland Security Investigations did not start looking into her until March, almost a year after her arrest.
From March 5 until March 13, the day she was detained, federal agents interviewed people who knew her, including her mother and uncle.
They set up a trace on her WhatsApp account and subpoenaed records from MoneyGram, according to court documents. She had sent the $1,000 to her aunt on behalf of her mother, who could not figure out how to send the funds through MoneyGram, according to her family and lawyers.
After Ms. Kordia learned that ICE wanted to question her, she hired a lawyer and they went to the agency’s Newark field office to explain. But her lawyer was barred from the meeting and Ms. Kordia was immediately detained and put on a plane to Texas.
The following day, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, accused Ms. Kordia of taking part in “pro-Hamas protests,” and the federal investigator asked the New York Police Department about the supposed money laundering investigation.
An officer who works at the police’s Real Time Crime Center, a hub that provides detectives with data, gave an agent from Homeland Security Investigations the sealed arrest report, which state law forbids. The Police Department has said it is investigating the officer’s actions.
In court papers, Ms. Kordia’s lawyers have said that she has been kept in miserable conditions at Prairieland, where cockroaches skitter across the floor and guards have refused to honor her requests for halal meals.
Hamzah Abushaban, a cousin who came to visit her in Texas soon after her arrest, said he was shocked. She had lost 50 pounds, had dark circles under her eyes and seemed confused about why she was there.
“I’ve never seen her look like that,” said Mr. Abushaban. “She looked like death.”
Ms. Kordia’s future in the United States remains uncertain. Prosecutors have said that federal investigators are still investigating her for financial transactions overseas.
Before her arrest, Ms. Kordia had been trying to start a business selling candles and balloons. She had found a small space about five minutes from her mother’s house in Paterson that she planned to rent.
During the immigration court hearing in April, the judge asked Ms. Kordia about the space. Was she still renting it?
Ms. Kordia replied simply, expressing little emotion.
“I had it for one night,” she said. “That’s it. Then I came here.”
