Metropolis Council Speaker Adrienne Adams.
Photograph by William Alatriste/NYC Council
The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) and Metropolis Council Speaker Adrienne Adams strongly condemned Mayor Eric Adams’ announcement on Tuesday relating to the opening of an ICE workplace on Rikers Island.
This follows Adams’ coordination and public appearances with “border czar” Thomas Homan and comes after federal prosecutors dropped Adams’ corruption case on the behest of President Donald J. Trump.
“For centuries, immigrants have constructed the financial system and tradition of New York Metropolis – and for years, our sanctuary legal guidelines and insurance policies have protected immigrant New Yorkers from ICE’s predatory enforcement practices. Whereas Trump is detaining and disappearing individuals throughout the nation with out due course of, Mayor Adams and his administration is rolling out the welcome mat for violating New Yorkers’ civil rights with impunity,” NYIC’s President and CEO Murad Awawdeh instructed Caribbean Life.
NYIC is an umbrella coverage and advocacy group representing over 200 immigrant and refugee rights teams all through New York.
“Adams is making a runaround on the metropolis’s longstanding sanctuary legal guidelines – public security measures that make New York safer for everybody – and attacking the very beliefs that make New York the best metropolis on the earth,” Awawdeh added.
“Now is time for New York’s elected officers to face agency in defending our immigrant households, as our mayor has as soon as once more proved he’s unwilling to,” he continued. “We are going to work with the NYC Metropolis Council with urgency to battle this.”
Speaker Adams famous that First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro issued Govt Order 50 on Tuesday to re-establish the flexibility for ICE brokers to function on Rikers Island for legal enforcement.
Speaker Adams mentioned, “This comes on the identical day that prime IRS officers resigned after the company took steps to share protected tax information for deportation efforts, departing from a long time of observe.”
She mentioned the chief order’s potential was first introduced in February following Mayor Adams’ assembly with Homan and after Division of Justice (DOJ) officers interfered in his legal case.
“This government order is deeply regarding, significantly given Choose Ho’s current ruling on Mayor Adams’ corruption case, the tried quid professional quo, and the collection of extremely troubling current occasions between the Trump administration and our metropolis’s mayor,” Speaker Adams mentioned. “It’s arduous to not see this motion as linked to the dismissal of the mayor’s case and his willingness to cooperate with Trump’s excessive deportation agenda that’s eradicating residents with out justification or due course of.
“The mayor’s resolution to compromise the metropolis’s sovereignty, threaten chaos, and danger hurt to our households finally resulted within the resignation of 4 deputy mayors,” she added.
“As now we have made abundantly clear, Native Legislation 58 of 2014 has clear tips that prohibit the usage of workplace house on Rikers for the enforcement of civil immigration enforcement,” Speaker Adams continued. “The Council is carefully reviewing the order and is ready to defend towards violations of the regulation to guard the protection of all New Yorkers.”
Govt Order 50 notes that Rikers Island is the location of correctional amenities underneath the jurisdiction of the Division of Corrections (DOC) and at the moment homes members and associates of designated terrorist organizations, amongst different people incarcerated there.
It additionally states that “there may be historic precedent for federal regulation enforcement authorities to have workplace house and personnel on Rikers Island as lately as a decade in the past; and Sections 2(m) and a couple of(p) of Govt Order No. 49, signed March 24, 2025, delegates to the First Deputy Mayor the authority to carry out any operate, energy or responsibility of the mayor in negotiating, executing and delivering any and all agreements, devices and different paperwork obligatory or fascinating to effectuate any of the issues for any entity throughout the portfolio of the First Deputy Mayor or the Deputy Mayor for Public Security, and to carry out such different duties because the mayor might direct.”
Mastro mentioned that, upon his appointment as First Deputy Mayor on April 1, 2025, Mayor Adams licensed him “to find out, primarily based on my impartial evaluation, whether or not and underneath what circumstances to allow federal regulation enforcement authorities to have a presence on Rikers Island, and I’ve since carried out an impartial evaluate and made that evaluation.”
He mentioned Native Legislation 58 of 2014, codified within the New York Metropolis Administrative Code at part 9-131, “permits federal immigration authorities to take care of workplace house on land over which DOC has jurisdiction for functions unrelated to the enforcement of civil immigration legal guidelines.”
Mayor Adams, subsequently, licensed that federal regulation enforcement companies, together with however not restricted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Safety Investigations, and the US Postal Inspection Service, “designate personnel to take care of workplace house on land over which DOC has jurisdiction for the aim of legal enforcement and legal investigations solely.
“Such federal regulation enforcement personnel shall coordinate with CIB legal investigations and associated intelligence sharing targeted on violent criminals and gangs, crimes dedicated at or facilitated by individuals in DOC custody, and drug trafficking,” Adams added.
