Mayor Adams’ office issued an executive order late Tuesday allowing ICE agents to operate on Rikers Island — a move sought by President Trump’s administration that comes on the heels of the Justice Department securing a dismissal of the mayor’s federal corruption indictment.
Adams first said on Feb. 13 he would sign an executive order to let federal immigration agents operate on Rikers, the city’s main jail housing thousands of inmates, most of whom aren’t convicted of any crimes. The announcement — which immigration advocates and local Democrats said flew in the face of local sanctuary city laws — came days after Trump’s Justice Department first moved to drop Adams’ corruption case with the understanding it would enable the mayor to assist the president’s effort to target undocumented New Yorkers for “mass deportations.”
The order, which takes effect immediately, comes after a Manhattan judge last Wednesday begrudgingly approved the Trump DOJ’s request to drop Adams’ case, while lamenting the arrangement “smacks” of a “bargain” in which the mayor gets his criminal dilemma quashed in exchange for helping Trump with a political agenda.
Adams didn’t sign Tuesday’s order himself. Randy Mastro, Adams’ newly-minted first deputy mayor, signed the directive, which says agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as some other federal agencies, such as the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration, can now maintain offices on Rikers “for the purpose of criminal enforcement and criminal investigations only.”
In a statement, Adams’ office said the mayor delegated the order to Mastro to ensure “trust” among New Yorkers, but that explanation did little to convince Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, whose Democrat-controlled chamber expanded the city’s sanctuary laws in 2014 to bar ICE from Rikers.
“It is hard not to see this action as connected to the dismissal of the mayor’s case and his willingness to cooperate with Trump’s extreme deportation agenda that is removing residents without justification or due process,” Speaker Adams, who’s running for mayor this year, said in a statement in which she also vowed her chamber is “closely reviewing the order, and is prepared to defend against violations of the law to protect the safety of all New Yorkers.”
Under sanctuary laws, city law enforcement agencies can only cooperate with federal immigration authorities in cases pertaining to 170 serious crimes, including murder and rape.
Acknowledging the sanctuary laws, which bar city resources from being used in civil deportation proceedings, Mastro’s order says any feds on Rikers must enter into legal agreements with Adams’ administration affirming their activities can only be “limited to purposes unrelated to the enforcement of civil immigration laws.”
According to Mastro’s order, Rikers “currently houses members and associates of designated terrorist organizations.” The missive says it’s “critical” federal authorities be allowed to cooperate with the NYPD and other city agencies when it comes to going after such “violent criminals.”
Adams’ office didn’t return a request for comment on what information Mastro has indicating there are terrorists on Rikers. In a CBS News interview Tuesday night, Mastro said “These are vicious killers and the worst kind of criminal gangs, and that’s why they’ve been designated as terrorist organizations, so we are doing what we can for the safety of all New Yorkers to cooperate and communicate directly with federal law enforcement.”
Trump recently designated Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as a “foreign terrorist organization” as part of a presidential executive order that has raised legal concerns.
Mastro’s order also reveals Adams tasked the first deputy immediately upon his April 1 appointment with looking into “whether and under what circumstances to permit federal law enforcement authorities to have a presence on Rikers Island.” Previously, Adams only said his Law Department was working on the order.
Though Mastro’s order promises feds on Rikers can only engage in criminal investigations, Zach Ahmad, a senior policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the directive “opens the door to unlawful collusion between local law enforcement and federal immigration officials in violation of our city’s well-established sanctuary protections.”
“Crime in New York City is down — and there was never any evidence that a surge in crime was caused by immigrants,” said Ahmad, whose group has a history of suing both the Adams and Trump administrations. “New Yorkers see this for what it is: Mayor Adams skirting the City Council, cozying up to Trump, and putting immigrant New Yorkers in harm’s way.”
