New York City Mayor Eric Adams is allowing federal immigration authorities into the Big Apple’s largest criminal detention center to facilitate the Trump administration’s deportation effort.
Adams issued an executive order Thursday authorizing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to access the Rikers Island jail complex after ICE offices in the criminal detention area were closed in 2014. The directive allows ICE agents to transfer illegal immigrants who have committed crimes from state prison to federal custody swiftly. The mayor is also eyeing ways to embed New York City Police Department detectives into federal task forces to target “violent gangs.”
“As I have always said, immigrants have been crucial in building our city and will continue to be key to our future success, but we must fix our long-broken immigration system,” Adams stated. “Since the spring of 2022, New York City has been forced to shoulder the burden of a national humanitarian crisis where more than 230,000 migrants have come to our city seeking support, at a cost of approximately $7 billion, with little help from the previous administration.”
“That is why I have been clear that I want to work with the new federal administration, not war with them, to find common ground and make better the lives of New Yorkers,” the mayor added.
His announcement followed a meeting earlier in the day with Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s border czar.
“They need to understand, if we arrest a bad guy at Rikers Island, then the alien’s safe, the officer’s safe, the community is safe,” Homan told Newsmax after he met with the mayor. “But when you release that public safety threat back in the public, what do I have to do? We need to send law enforcement officers into that community.”
Adams’s executive order overturns a bill signed into law in 2014 by then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio that enacted some sanctuary city policies and prohibited ICE from accessing Rikers Island, as well as all criminal detention facilities in the city. A loophole in the law allowed Adams to reopen access to ICE, citing “purposes unrelated to the enforcement of civil immigration laws.”
The mayor’s move Thursday comes after Homan warned that a lack of cooperation between federal immigration authorities and local and state law enforcement increases risks during ICE operations. Such policies put federal agents working to apprehend suspected criminals in public settings who were released from jails without ICE’s knowledge in heightened danger, as well as community members, Homan contended.
Adams’s cooperation with the Trump administration in aiding ICE’s deportations followed an order from the Department of Justice earlier this week halting a corruption case against the mayor. The directive argued the previous DOJ had weaponized the system against Adams for political reasons due to his resistance to the Biden administration’s relaxed illegal immigration policies. The charges leveled against Adams were inappropriately timed to complicate his hopes for mayoral reelection, the memorandum suggested.
“We are particularly concerned about the impact of the prosecution on Mayor Adams’s ability to support critical ongoing federal efforts to protect the American people from the disastrous effects of unlawful mass migration and resettlement,” Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove wrote in the letter released Monday.
When the news that Adams was opening Riker’s Island to the Trump administration came days after the DOJ dropped the charges, New York Democrats accused the mayor of quid pro quo.
“The White House made a decision to dismiss the criminal charges pending against Mayor Adams without prejudice,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said. “Translation: It is the intention of the Trump administration to keep the current mayor on a short leash. How the mayor responds to the White House’s intentions is going to determine a lot about the political future.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was not far behind.
“Mayor Adams is putting the City of New York and its people at risk in exchange for escaping charges,” she said in a post to X. “As long as Trump wields this leverage over Adams, the city is endangered. We cannot be governed under coercion.”
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Adams characterized his executive order as a way to protect the city from violent criminals.
“Keeping the 8.3 million New Yorkers who call our city home safe is, and will always remain, our administration’s North Star,” he said.
