New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday dismissed as “baseless” a Metropolis Council lawsuit requesting a brief restraining order (TRO) and a preliminary injunction in opposition to Adams’ Govt Order 50 permitting Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) company to function an workplace on Rikers Island Correctional Facility that may facilitate the deportation of Caribbean and different immigrants.
“The Metropolis Council seems to be spreading misinformation, so let’s be clear: To keep up the belief of the almost 8.5 million New Yorkers our administration serves and protects day-after-day — and to make sure there was by no means even the looks of any battle — Mayor Adams delegated all powers, duties and decision-making associated to any motion authorizing federal officers to analyze crimes at Rikers Island to First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro,” Mayoral Spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus advised Caribbean Life in an announcement.
“The primary deputy mayor performed a radical and unbiased evaluation — which included a number of visits to Rikers Island, conversations with federal regulation enforcement and our personal Division of Correction officers, and extra — and he independently concluded {that a} federal presence at Rikers to conduct federal legal investigations is in New York Metropolis’s finest curiosity and protects public security, notably in our ongoing efforts to focus on violent transnational gangs now current in our metropolis, together with these designated as terrorist organizations,” she added.
“Cooperation with federal regulation enforcement — together with the FBI, DEA, ATF, Homeland Safety, and US Postal Inspectors — can be expressly restricted to legal regulation enforcement investigations, not civil issues. Govt Order 50 is expressly approved by New York Metropolis’s native legal guidelines — the very legal guidelines enacted by the Metropolis Council,” Altus continued.
“Whereas we’ll overview the lawsuit, this one appears baseless and opposite to the general public curiosity in defending New Yorkers from violent criminals,” she stated. “We stay dedicated to our administration’s efforts to cut back crime and preserve New Yorkers secure — we hope the Metropolis Council will be part of us in doing so.”
As well as, Altus stated, “The Metropolis Council apparently realizes this govt order, on its face, is in line with native regulation. So, it engages in rank hypothesis and surmise, which isn’t a correct foundation for any lawsuit.”
Adams’ Govt Order 50 was issued by First Deputy Mayor Mastro on April 8.
The Metropolis Council lawsuit contends that the manager order is “illegal, tainted by the battle of curiosity created by the corrupt cut price the mayor entered into – his private freedom in trade for an ICE workplace.
“The regulation is evident that the mayor is unable to remedy that battle of curiosity just by delegating his authority to open an ICE workplace to Deputy Mayor Mastro,” it says.
In in search of a direct halt of any related exercise, the lawsuit outlines how the “illegal motion” would undermine public security in New York Metropolis by eroding belief between native authorities, together with native regulation enforcement and New Yorkers.
It additionally argues that the mayor by no means delegated the required responsibility to Mastro, as required by the Metropolis Constitution.
“As soon as once more, this Metropolis Council is standing agency to guard the rights and security of all New Yorkers in opposition to assaults by the Trump administration — as a result of the town’s mayor received’t cease putting his personal private pursuits forward of the folks of our metropolis,” stated Speaker Adrienne Adams, a candidate for Mayor of the Metropolis of New York in June’s Democratic Main. “Mayor Eric Adams clearly indicated his intention for this govt order when the Trump administration tried to dismiss his corruption case in what prosecutors and Choose Ho noticed as a quid professional quo.
“The mayor has compromised our metropolis’s sovereignty and is now threatening the protection of all New Yorkers, which is why we’re submitting this lawsuit to halt his unlawful order that he shamelessly previewed on the Fox Information sofa with Tom Homan,” she added. “When New Yorkers are afraid of cooperating with our metropolis’s personal police, and discouraged from reporting crime and in search of assist, it makes everybody in our metropolis much less secure.
“It is a bare try by Eric Adams to meet his finish of the cut price for particular remedy he obtained from the Trump administration,” Speaker Adams continued. “New York can not afford its mayor colluding with the Trump administration to violate the regulation, and this lawsuit seems to the court docket to uphold the fundamental commonplace of democracy, even when our mayor received’t.”
The Metropolis Council stated that on the identical day that Trump’s Division of Justice (DOJ) ordered Adams’ federal corruption case dismissed with out prejudice, the mayor met with Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and expressed his intention to ask ICE onto Rikers through govt order.
“The political intervention within the corruption case led a number of high federal prosecutors to resign and assert the actions amounted to a quid professional quo,” it stated.
The Council famous that Federal Choose Dale Ho, who declined to right away dismiss the case and sought unbiased arguments, indicated that “The whole lot right here smacks of a cut price: dismissal of the indictment in trade for immigration coverage concessions.”
The Metropolis Council stated the manager order pertains to Native Regulation 58 of 2014 that forestalls federal immigration authorities from sustaining an workplace on Rikers Island.
Final week, the Council handed Decision 836, authorizing Speaker Adams to take authorized motion to defend in opposition to the mayoral administration’s violation of Sanctuary Legal guidelines and the Trump administration’s assaults on the Metropolis of New York.
The lawsuit says Govt Order 50 is “the poisoned fruit of Mayor Adams’ cope with the Trump administration: if the mayor cooperated with the administration’s immigration enforcement priorities, together with by allowing ICE to function on Rikers, the fees in opposition to him could be dismissed.”
It additionally says that “The mayor’s resolution to have Mastro challenge the EO (govt order) on April 8, 2025, doesn’t magically cleanse the taint of battle from the order.”
As well as, the lawsuit contends that “ICE has lengthy been infamous for sweeping unintended targets into its enforcement actions, which means that permitting ICE again onto Rikers for the aim of legal investigation functions is just a brief and slippery slope to civil immigration enforcement.
“The truth is, ICE routinely arrests immigrants who merely occur to be within the neighborhood of its meant goal, regardless of missing a warrant and even possible trigger with respect to these ‘collateral’ arrestees,” it says. “And it continues to take action in violation of a federal court docket order that restricted this observe in 2022 however which it has flagrantly disregarded.”
The mayor’s Govt Order 50 notes that Rikers Island is the positioning of correctional services below 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 just 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 inside the portfolio of the First Deputy Mayor or the Deputy Mayor for Public Security, and to carry out such different duties because the mayor could direct.”
Mastro stated that, upon his appointment as First Deputy Mayor on April 1, 2025, Mayor Adams approved him “to find out, primarily based on my unbiased evaluation, whether or not and below what circumstances to allow federal regulation enforcement authorities to have a presence on Rikers Island, and I’ve since performed an unbiased overview and made that evaluation.”
He stated Native Regulation 58 of 2014, as 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, approved that federal regulation enforcement businesses, 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.
