Tish James Went Silent on Downgrading Charges for Illegal Immigrants — Now We Know Why

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) smiled and said nothing when confronted over a House Judiciary Committee report alleging the city's district attorneys instructed prosecutors to downgrade charges against illegal aliens to shield them from deportation.

Now a former top ICE official in New York is explaining why that question may have been so uncomfortable. 

Scott Mechkowski, a retired deputy field office director for ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations in New York City, says Bronx DA Darcel Clark's (D) playbook for child sex abuse cases was designed to keep deportable offenders here.

It's quite sickening when you think about it.

Mechkowski, in a lengthy post on X earlier today, pointed to a single line in a 2019 Bronx training guide, as reproduced in the House Judiciary Committee report. Prosecutors, according to the report, were told to "[o]ffer something that does not have the child's age as an element of the crime."

"Think about what that means," he continued. "A grown man commits a sex crime against a child. He pleads to something that, on paper, could have been against an adult. The record that reaches ICE no longer shows a child victim."

"The removal case falls apart, and he stays here."

Mechkowski pointed out that the child is not the beneficiary of any such deal the way the criminal illegal alien is and, in fact, has to live with what was done to them while the abuser gets to continue hanging around the same neighborhood.

🚨 They didn't lose the child's age. They were trained to leave it out. Under federal immigration law, sexual abuse of a minor is an aggravated felony. For a noncitizen, it means mandatory detention, deportation and a permanent bar from ever coming back. In my 24 years at ICE ERO, those were the cases we never let slide. The key element is the child's age. Take the age out of the conviction and you take out the aggravated felony. According to the House Judiciary Committee report, the Bronx DA's 2019 plea-bargaining guide told prosecutors in these cases to "offer something that does not have the child's age as an element." Think about what that means. A grown man commits a sex crime against a child. He pleads to something that, on paper, could have been against an adult. The record that reaches ICE no longer shows a child victim. The removal case falls apart, and he stays here. The child didn't get a plea deal. The child gets to live with it, and maybe in the same neighborhood as him. This came out Oct. 26. Two weeks later there's been no outrage from the Bronx DA, the AG or the networks. Nothing. @claudiatenney @JudiciaryGOP @Jim_Jordan @itsyourgov @NMalliotakis @EliseStefanik https://t.co/lHhaqhSfhU

— Scott Mechkowski (@ScottMechkowski) November 9, 2026

Embedded tweet continues:

... ERO, those were the cases we never let slide. The key element is the child's age. Take the age out of the conviction and you take out the aggravated felony. According to the House Judiciary Committee report, the Bronx DA's 2019 plea-bargaining guide told prosecutors in these cases to "offer something that does not have the child's age as an element." Think about what that means. A grown man commits a sex crime against a child. He pleads to something that, on paper, could have been against an adult. The record that reaches ICE no longer shows a child victim. The removal case falls apart, and he stays here. The child didn't get a plea deal. The child gets to live with it, and maybe in the same neighborhood as him. This came out Oct. 26. Two weeks later there's been no outrage from the Bronx DA, the AG or the networks. Nothing. @claudiatenney @JudiciaryGOP @Jim_Jordan @itsyourgov @NMalliotakis @EliseStefanik

The House Judiciary Committee's interim staff report, released on Oct. 26, alleges that the district attorneys in all five boroughs gave "preferential treatment" to illegal aliens so they could avoid deportation.

It said Clark "trains prosecutors in her office to conceal certain facts from the record of conviction and pursue alternative charges," and that the office even endorsed pleas to "legally impossible" crimes like "attempted reckless assault."

Fox News reports that data obtained by the Immigrant Defense Project shows 289 convictions for attempted reckless assault across the city from 2015 through 2025, including 50 in the Bronx.

When a reporter put the report to James, Queens DA Melinda Katz (D) and Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez (D) at a press conference days later, James did little more than stare blankly.

Katz simply muttered an incomprehensible defense, while the event was hastily moved along.

Mechkowski says that two weeks after the report came out, there's been "no outrage from the Bronx DA, the AG or the networks."

Katz's office told the New York Post it has never offered leniency on gun crimes to "any defendant," while Staten Island's DA called the report "flagrantly false and patently political." 

The report doesn't identify a specific child-victim case where the Bronx guidance was used, so the question of how often it happened remains unanswered. But when a reporter gave them a chance to clear up the facts, James, Katz, and Gonzalez had nothing to say on camera, which is a funny way to defend a policy you insist is perfectly fine.

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