New York City did it again. The city released a violent illegal alien with an ICE detainer sitting in the file, and now there's a manhunt to find him. ICE didn't lose him. The city let him walk out the front door first.

MSN has the story. The short version: NYPD had the man in custody, ICE filed a detainer asking the department to hold him for pickup, and the department let him go anyway.

For anyone new to this beat, a detainer is a simple document. ICE asks the local jail to hold an illegal alien for up to 48 hours past his release date so agents can come get him. A phone call and a parking space, nothing more. New York City treats these requests like junk mail, because city sanctuary rules forbid honoring them in most cases.

So now federal agents get to do it the hard way. Instead of picking up one man at Rikers on a known date and time, they get to chase him through the five boroughs after he's had time to scatter. More agents, more hours, more money, more risk to the public. Every one of these cases ends the same way: the sanctuary crowd saves itself a paperwork fight and hands the bill to ICE and to whoever lives near this guy's next address.

This is the policy, not an accident. The city isn't failing to cooperate by mistake. And every time one of these released aliens goes on to hurt somebody, and the news cycle finds the detainer that got ignored, the same officials who wrote the rules act stunned. Nobody should be stunned. If you release a man the federal government flagged as violent, the predictable thing happens. It happens on schedule.

ICE, for its part, keeps doing the job. Agents will run this one down the way they run down all of them, with wanted notices, tip lines, and door-knocks. The man will turn up. They always do. It just takes longer and costs more than it had to, and the people who made it take longer will face zero consequences for it.

I spent 26 years watching local cooperation make or break cases. When a sheriff honors a detainer, the arrest is boring. Boring is good. Boring means nobody gets hurt and the alien is on a plane instead of on a most-wanted poster. New York has chosen excitement.

The manhunt continues. When he's caught, and he will be, remember who had him in a cell first.