ICE Asked NYC to Hold Him.
NYC Said No.
Four People Burned to Death.
On the morning of March 16, 2026, a 38-year-old Mexican national named Roman Ceron Amatitla allegedly walked into a three-story apartment building at 132-05 Avery Avenue in Flushing, Queens, lit a piece of paper on fire, dropped it on a stairwell trash pile, and walked back out. Four people died. A 3-year-old girl named Sihan Yang died of smoke inhalation. So did Chengri Cui (49), Chie Shin Ming (61), and Hong Zhao (64), who jumped from a window. Two FDNY firefighters were hospitalized when the second floor collapsed under them.
On April 15, 2026, with Amatitla in custody on Rikers Island awaiting his arraignment on eight counts of second-degree murder and first-degree arson, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a federal detainer asking the New York City Department of Correctionto notify ICE before releasing him — an alien with no documented lawful status, charged with mass-casualty arson, in pre-trial custody. The next day, NYC DOC formally declined. The agency’s position: under New York City Administrative Code § 9-131, it does not honor ICE detainers absent a violent-conviction within the prior five years. Amatitla has no convictions yet. He is only charged with killing four people. So under the rule, the city won’t cooperate.
That rule did not happen by accident. It was written by the New York City Council, signed by a Democratic mayor, expanded by Democratic prosecutors, and is now actively defended — with new statewide legislation pending in Albany — by Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY), by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-NYC), by NYC DOC Commissioner Stanley Richards, and by Queens DA Melinda Katz (D)— the same DA who is now prosecuting the man the city refused to surrender. The Center for Immigration Studies summarized it the way most New Yorkers reading the indictment will summarize it: lack of cooperation with ICE to deport an illegal immigrant resulted in a family tragedy.
- 4people killed in the March 16 fireSihan Yang (3), Chengri Cui (49), Chie Shin Ming (61), and Hong Zhao (64) — per the Queens County District Attorney's May 12, 2026 indictment release.
- 37 countsin the grand-jury indictmentIncluding 4 counts of first-degree murder, 12 counts of second-degree murder, 5 counts of first-degree arson, plus assault and petit larceny — per Queens DA Melinda Katz's May 12, 2026 release.
- RefusedICE detainer issued April 15, 2026NYC Department of Correction declined to notify ICE before releasing the defendant — citing NYC Administrative Code § 9-131, which requires a violent-crime conviction (not charge) within five years before DOC will cooperate.
- 6,947criminal aliens NY released into communitiesDHS data, January 20 – December 1, 2025: alleged crimes by released aliens include 29 homicides, 2,509 assaults, 199 burglaries, 305 robberies, 392 dangerous-drug, 300 weapons, and 207 sexual-predatory offenses — per April 16, 2026 DHS press release.
- Local Cops, Local Crimes Actintroduced January 30, 2026 by HochulThe pending statewide bill would void all 14 existing NY 287(g) ICE-cooperation agreements across nine counties and bar federal use of state/local detention space for civil immigration enforcement.
March 16, 2026, Avery Avenue, Flushing.Per the Queens County District Attorney’s release, Roman Ceron Amatitla, 38, of Maspeth, Queens, allegedly entered the three-story apartment building at 132-05 Avery Avenue three times that morning, urinated in the hallway in front of apartment doors, and left.
The matches. He then walked to a nearby gas station, bought one beer, stole a second, and asked for a lighter. When the clerk refused to sell him one without payment, he took a pack of matches instead. He returned to the building a fourth time. He lit a piece of paper on fire. He dropped it onto a trash pile next to the first-floor stairwell. He walked out and did not warn anyone inside. The building burned.
The four dead. Three-year-old Sihan Yang died of smoke inhalation. Chengri Cui (49) and Chie Shin Ming (61) also died of smoke inhalation. Hong Zhao (64) died of injuries sustained jumping from a window to escape the fire. Seven others were injured. Two FDNY firefighters fell when the second floor collapsed mid-rescue and were hospitalized at Jacobi with burns and smoke inhalation.
The charges. Amatitla was first arraigned April 9, 2026 on eight counts of second-degree murder and first-degree arson. On May 12, 2026, a Queens grand jury returned a 37-count upgraded indictment including four counts of first-degree murder — which carries life without parole on conviction — twelve counts of second-degree murder, five counts of first-degree arson, two counts of first-degree assault, ten counts of second-degree arson, three counts of second-degree assault, and petit larceny. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant DA Gabriel J. Reale before NYS Supreme Court Justice Michael Yavinski. Next court date: July 14, 2026.
Presumption of innocence. Amatitla is presumed innocent of all charges until convicted at trial.
“As alleged, Roman Amatitla killed four people, including a 3-year-old girl, when he torched a building where they lived.”
Queens DA Melinda Katz (D) · May 12, 2026 indictment release
From the Record — Federal and Local Posts on the Indictment
The federal and county-level posts within hours of the April 9 charges and April 14 detainer request. ICE, DHS, and the Queens District Attorney’s office each posted contemporaneous statements; the federal posts named the policy refusal directly.
QUEENS, N.Y. — District Attorney Melinda Katz announced April 9 that Roman Ceron Amatitla, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico, was charged with EIGHT COUNTS OF MURDER and ARSON after he allegedly deliberately set a building on fire and watched it burn — killing four people, including a 3-year-old.
Defendant Roman Amatitla was remanded without bail at our request after my office filed charges of eight counts of murder in the second degree, arson in the first degree and related crimes for a fire that killed four occupants of a Flushing building and injured seven others.
ICE ARREST DETAINER DENIED. On April 14, ICE requested the NYCDOC not release this monster from jail back into American communities. However, because of New York’s sanctuary politicians, the NYCDOC told ICE that they will REFUSE to cooperate.
An ICE detaineris the federal government’s formal request, on Form I-247, that a local jail hold a removable alien for up to 48 hours past their scheduled release so federal officers can take custody. By federal law, compliance with that request is a state and local choice. New York City’s choice, codified, is to almost always say no.
What the law says.NYC DOC may transfer custody to ICE only when ICE produces both (a) a federal probable-cause document — a Form I-200 administrative warrant or I-205 final order — and (b) the person has been convicted of a “violent or serious crime” within the previous five years.
What that means in practice.A pre-trial defendant — even one charged with mass-casualty arson and the murder of four people including a 3-year-old — does not have a qualifying conviction. Under the rule, NYC DOC will not honor the detainer. The city does not contest the detainer was issued. The city says: it is required by its own law to refuse it.
What the DOC told reporters.“The DOC processes ICE detainers consistent with local law, which defines the extent of our cooperation with federal immigration authorities,” the agency said when asked about the Amatitla case (per QNS, April 2026).
Who wrote the law.The current detainer-restriction framework dates to 2014 amendments under Mayor Bill de Blasio and the de Blasio-era City Council. It has been actively defended and reinforced — not narrowed — by every Democratic mayoral administration since.
The NYC DOC did not invent § 9-131. It is the policy of a chain of named Democratic officials, elected and appointed, who have all defended it on the record — some as recently as January and April of this year, weeks after the four bodies were carried out of Avery Avenue.
Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY). On January 30, 2026, six weeks before the Flushing fire, Hochul introduced the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act— a statewide bill that would void all fourteen existing 287(g) cooperation agreements between New York law enforcement agencies and ICE (across nine counties), bar federal use of state and local detention facilities for civil immigration enforcement, and require a judicial warrant before federal immigration officers can enter sensitive locations. Her stated rationale, on the record: “the weaponization of local police officers for civil immigration enforcement will not stand in New York.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D-NYC).Mamdani campaigned in 2025 on expanding, not narrowing, NYC sanctuary protections. As mayor, he has retained NYC Administrative Code § 9-131 as binding DOC policy and has not asked the City Council to carve out homicide or arson defendants. DHS, in its April 16 press release, named him directly.
NYC DOC Commissioner Stanley Richards.Mamdani’s February 2026 appointee. Under his command, the agency declined the April 15 ICE detainer in the Amatitla case and issued the “consistent with local law” statement defending the refusal.
Queens County District Attorney Melinda Katz (D).Co-signatory to Hochul’s January 30 Local Cops, Local Crimes Act announcement. Now personally prosecuting the defendant the city refused to hand to ICE on charges that, if proven, would have justified federal removal proceedings well before March 16.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (D), Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez (D), Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple, Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr., Albany County DA Lee Kindlon, and others.All co-signed Hochul’s January 30 announcement. The policy of non-cooperation with ICE on detainers is, in Albany’s telling, a coalition position.
NY Attorney General Letitia James (D). Has issued statewide guidance to local jurisdictions reinforcing that compliance with ICE civil detainers is not legally required and discouraging it. Her office has not asked the legislature to carve out pre-trial defendants in homicide cases.
On Camera — The Officials Defending the Policy in Their Own Words
The political-chain defense is not abstract. Mayor Mamdani and Governor Hochul have each gone on camera in 2026 to defend non-cooperation with ICE and to expand it. The clips below are their own statements; the framing is theirs, not ours.
The Amatitla case is not a one-off. It is the policy operating as designed.
Per the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s April 16, 2026 release, between January 20 and December 1, 2025, New York State and New York City agencies released 6,947 criminal aliens that ICE had asked them to hold.
The aggregate alleged offense breakdown of those 6,947 releases:
- 29 homicides
- 2,509 assaults
- 199 burglaries
- 305 robberies
- 392 dangerous-drug offenses
- 300 weapons offenses
- 207 sexual-predatory offenses
These are not federal estimates. They are the federal government’s tally of detainers that New York jurisdictions specifically declined — the universe inside which the Amatitla case is, statistically, one entry.
Other Names in the Same Pattern
DHS has documented other 2026 NYC cases inside the same release pipeline. The post below is the December 2025 NYC subway-shove case (a 4-time-deported Honduran national who allegedly shoved an 83-year-old veteran onto the tracks) — one of the 6,947. The CIS map post catalogs the geography of the policy nationally.
@ICEgov has lodged a detainer against Bairon Posada-Hernandez, the criminal illegal alien from Honduras who shoved two men, including an 83-year-old Veteran, onto NYC subway tracks completely unprovoked. Posada-Hernandez first entered the country in 2008 and was deported four times.
We have updated our map of sanctuary jurisdictions based on data from ICE. Virginia, North Dakota, Nebraska, New York, and Minnesota have seen the most significant increases in sanctuary policies.
The honest version of the New York defense, made by NYC officials and law-enforcement sources to QNS, runs roughly as follows: Amatitla is being held without bail at Rikers. He is not going to be released anytime soon. The DHS framing is “a publicity stunt.” The detainer would only have mattered if and when he was about to walk free. So the city refusing it — today, on a defendant facing 37 counts including four counts of first-degree murder — is, in the city’s telling, beside the point.
That defense fails on two grounds.
First, the same rule applied to lower-level cases produced the 6,947 releases.Most of the 6,947 were not first-degree murder defendants; most were people charged with assault, drug offenses, weapons offenses, or sexual offenses, who finished their state-court process — sometimes by plea, sometimes by dismissal — and walked out the door past an ICE detainer the city had declined. Twenty-nine of those releases preceded a homicide. The city’s rule is what made that math possible.
Second, the rule had Amatitla’s name on it before the fire.A removable alien with no documented lawful status, who federal authorities believe should have been in immigration proceedings, was at large in Queens on March 16 because no agency — city, state, or federal — could lawfully be told by NYPD or NYC DOC that he was here. The detainer regime is not just about handing people over after a state case ends. It is about whether the federal government is allowed to know, in real time, who in the local jail is removable. Under New York’s rule, mostly, it is not allowed to know.
Governor: Kathy Hochul (D-NY). In office since 2021. Sponsor of the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act (Jan 30, 2026).
NYC Mayor: Zohran Mamdani (D-NYC). Sworn in January 2026. Named in DHS’s April 16, 2026 statement on the detainer refusal.
NYC DOC Commissioner: Stanley Richards. Appointed by Mamdani in February 2026.
Queens County DA: Melinda Katz (D). Re-elected November 2023. Lead prosecutor on the Amatitla indictment; co-signatory to Hochul’s sanctuary-cooperation bill.
NY Attorney General: Letitia James (D). In office since 2019. Issuer of statewide guidance discouraging compliance with civil ICE detainers.
NYC Council: Democratic supermajority. Author and defender of NYC Administrative Code § 9-131.
An undocumented Mexican national stands charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of four people, including a 3-year-old. ICE asked New York City to hold him. New York City said no, and pointed at a sanctuary statute written by a Democratic City Council, defended by a Democratic mayor, and reinforced by a sitting Democratic governor pushing legislation in Albany to take cooperation off the table statewide. The 6,947 other releases under the same rule include 29 homicides. This is the policy. It is operating exactly as its named authors intended.