New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Albany Democrats are on the verge of enacting the state’s most extreme sanctuary policies yet. With a deal reportedly 95 percent complete on an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) package tucked into budget talks, New York is about to codify its first statewide sanctuary law.

The legislation would ban local law enforcement from communicating with federal immigration authorities, sheriffs from helping detain deportable offenders, expand “sensitive locations” to include parks, let private businesses bar ICE agents, and even forbid federal officers from wearing masks. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie celebrated the coming agreement as a check on ICE “aggressiveness.”

Despite Hochul and Heastie’s sanctimonious preening, they are not taking part in any act of kindness. Instead, they are making a deliberate choice in favor of racially leftist ideology, ignoring a mountain of case history that shows sanctuary policies degrade public safety and explode city budgets. New York, California, Illinois, and other self-proclaimed havens have become cautionary tales. This experiment has failed spectacularly.

After the law-and-order mayoralty of Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s, the progressive slide began in earnest. Bill de Blasio’s eight years were memorable for “defund the police” talk, cashless bail, and the deliberate erosion of proactive policing, which resulted in a homicide spike of more than 40 percent in 2020. De Blasio strengthened sanctuary policies, advertising the city as a refuge while directing local precincts to withhold information from ICE. The signal to offenders was unmistakable: consequences for coming into the country illegally were optional and, in New York City, unlikely.

Eric Adams ran in 2021 promising to restore sanity as the “pro-cop” Democrat. Yet even Adams was constrained by the widespread pro-sanctuary attitude. Since 2022, more than 200,000 migrants have flooded New York, forcing the city to spend over $5 billion on shelters, hotels, and services with no end in sight. Schools are overcrowded, emergency rooms are strained, and public parks are dotted with tent cities.

The results of this sanctuary idealism were predictable: ballooning deficits, service cuts, and an exodus of high-income residents and businesses. New York has led the nation in net out-migration. Its tax base is shrinking as demands grow.

Now the torch has been passed to an even more radical generation of sanctuary zealots, including democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani and allies who treat any cooperation with ICE as a moral atrocity. They have pushed Hochul’s original January proposal into something even more radical by stripping out the narrow probable-cause exception for local police and adding sweeping new restrictions.

Heastie and company frame this as protecting “due process.” They never explain how shielding criminal aliens from ICE helps working-class New Yorkers worried about subway safety, classroom overcrowding, or rent. The record is unambiguous: sanctuary jurisdictions see elevated rates of repeat offending by removable aliens because local police are muzzled from sharing data with ICE.

The sanctuary virus has infected many of America’s other big cities in decline. San Francisco’s sanctuary regime produced open fentanyl markets and smash-and-grab theft until voters rebelled. Chicago’s migrant influx has strained budgets and neighborhoods, while violent crime has become a fact of life in the city. California and Illinois have watched taxpayers flee to states that still enforce basic order.

When cities advertise themselves as sanctuaries, they encourage more human suffering. The very populations sanctuary policies claim to protect—legal immigrants and low-income citizens—suffer the most from rising crime and falling quality of life.

Hochul’s cave-in is especially galling. She leads a state already bleeding population and revenue. Rather than demand cooperation with federal law enforcement to restore order and stop the financial bleeding, she has surrendered to left-wing pressure in an election year and produced what critics call the most extreme sanctuary package in state history.

The rhetoric of “welcoming” cities sounds noble in press releases. In practice, it has poisoned already struggling metro areas. New York’s decade-plus experiment—spanning de Blasio’s slogans, Adams’s half-measures, Mamdani’s socialism, and now Hochul’s statewide codification—has delivered the precise opposite of its promises: less safety, deeper fiscal holes, and fewer opportunities for the people who pay taxes and follow the rules.

It is long past time to retire the sanctuary fantasy. Cities do not become safer or more humane by pretending that immigration laws do not exist. They become poorer and more dangerous. The past dozen years have shown what clearly doesn’t work. The once-great home of Broadway, Times Square, Madison Square Garden, and ticker-tape parades deserves better.