NYC mayor to allow immigration officials to operate at Rikers jail after Trump border czar meeting
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he’ll allow federal immigration officials to operate at the city’s Rikers Island jail following a meeting Thursday with President Donald Trump’s border czar.
Adams said he’ll issue an executive order reestablishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence at the island jail complex, as had been the case under prior administrations.
The Democrat said ICE agents would be focused on assisting the correction department’s intelligence bureau in their criminal investigations, particularly those focused on violent criminals and gangs.
Adams said he also talked with Thomas Homan about ways to embed more New York police detectives into federal task forces focused on violent gangs and criminal activity.
“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,” he said in a statement. “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.”
Homan met with Adams at a federal office building in Manhattan as the Republican administration pushes for more help detaining and deporting people accused of crimes.
But ICE has long had a contentious relationship with New York, which has rules and laws limiting police cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Immigration officials, for example, aren't able to request city jails hold people wanted for civil immigration law violations past when they would ordinarily be released from custody, under city policy.
New York City has also passed measures that curtail ICE’s access to public schools and other city properties.
Adams, who faces a Democratic primary in June, has said he favors loosening these so-called sanctuary policies, but he doesn’t have the broad power to do so as mayor.
He stressed Thursday that his priority is to ensure that people who commit serious crimes are removed from the city.
“Keeping the 8.3 million New Yorkers who call our city home safe is — and will always remain — our administration’s North Star,” Adams said in the statement.
The Democrat is under unique pressure to cooperate with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
On Monday, the Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors in Manhattan to dismiss corruption charges against Adams so he could focus on assisting the president’s immigration agenda.
As of Thursday, the criminal charges remained in place. If the case is ultimately dropped, a senior Justice Department official said in a memo that a review would be done after the mayoral election in November to assess whether it should be reinstated.
Immigration advocates say they’re concerned Adams might feel pressure from the Trump administration to disregard or rescind some of the city’s sanctuary protections, which come from a patchwork of state and city laws and mayoral executive orders, some stretching back decades.
Republican members of New York’s City Council who met separately with Homan prior to the mayor's meeting said Homan hoped Adams will support efforts to roll back the city’s sanctuary protections.
“He’s expecting cooperation,” said Councilmember Bob Holden.
Adams has already ordered city officials to lawfully cooperate with Trump’s agenda around immigration and other issues, though the administration’s instructions have sparked worry and confusion among some city workers and contractors.
Adams said before the meeting with Homan that he also intended to discuss restoring the more than $80 million the Federal Emergency Management Agency clawed back from the city on Wednesday that was meant to defray the cost of sheltering homeless migrants.
The Adams administration has leased several hotels and vacant buildings and repurposed them as migrant shelters as the city has tried to house some 230,000 people that have arrived from the U.S. southern border in recent years.
The Trump administration on Wednesday also filed a lawsuit against New York’s governor and attorney general over the state’s so-called Green Light law, versions of which have been enacted in a number of states and generally allow people who might not be in the U.S. legally to get driver’s licenses.
___
Associated Press reporter Cedar Attanasio in New York contributed to this report.
© Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in this news report may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
