The numbers came out of New York this week and they're worth a minute. Agencies across the state rejected 16,000 ICE detainers during the Trump administration's enforcement push. The illegal aliens those detainers covered had been accused or convicted of over 52,000 crimes combined, according to the report.

For anyone who hasn't spent 26 years reading them, a detainer is a formal request from ICE to a local jail: hold this person for up to 48 hours past their release date so our officers can come pick him up. The alien is already in custody. ICE already knows he's removable. The jail's job is to keep the door shut until the transfer happens. New York declined that request 16,000 times.

The crime tally attached to those declined detainers is the part that should end the argument. Over 52,000 offenses, and I mean actual crimes on the books, not immigration violations, with the people behind them accused or convicted and sitting in local custody when ICE asked for them. The state's answer, sixteen thousand times over, was no.

The official line from the sanctuary crowd is that cooperation with ICE makes immigrant communities afraid to call the police. I've heard that argument my whole career and it's never made sense to me. Fifty-two thousand crimes means fifty-two thousand victims, and victims of crime committed by illegal aliens are overwhelmingly the very neighbors sanctuary policies claim to protect. Nobody protecting a community hands the people preying on it a pass.

There's also a practical wrinkle the sanctuary crowd never mentions. When locals refuse a detainer, ICE doesn't shrug and go home. The alien walks, and then agents have to find him again, which means going into the community and making arrests at homes and workplaces instead of a controlled custody transfer. Every one of these refusals made an operation harder and more dangerous for agents, for the alien, and for bystanders. The safe option was the cell. New York chose the street.

I kept a notebook my entire career with the Border Patrol, and I tracked every detainer my sector issued. The refusals used to be the exception, mostly a stray county here and there. Somewhere along the line, refusal became policy, and the count went from a trickle to 16,000 in a single state. Somebody made that decision, on purpose, in writing.

Scoreboard: 16,000 detainers declined. Over 52,000 crimes attached. And New York officials still want you to believe they're the ones keeping people safe. Read the numbers again and decide for yourself.