Adams allows ICE back on Rikers
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will again be allowed to operate criminal investigations on Rikers Island, Mayor Eric Adams’ administration said in an executive order issued late Tuesday. AP file photo by Alex Brandon
By Jacob Kaye
The Adams administration said late Tuesday that they will soon allow federal immigration agents onto Rikers Island, a move critics say could violate New York City’s sanctuary city laws.
In an executive order issued not by Mayor Eric Adams but by his recently-appointed first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, the administration said it would allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to open up an office within the secluded jail complex, where they’ll be able to conduct investigations into those who commit alleged crimes while in Department of Correction custody.
The order comes nearly two months after Adams met with President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, and said that he would grant ICE permission to enter the troubled jails where over 100 people have died in the past decade. Adams’ original announcement, which he made on “Fox and Friends” alongside Homan, sparked outrage and concern among immigration and criminal justice advocates, as well as local lawmakers, who claimed such an order would run afoul of the city’s sanctuary city laws.
The anger only increased on Tuesday, when several groups threatened to bring potential legal action against the mayor, while others doubled down on their accusation that the move by Adams was made as a favor to Trump in exchange for his administration’s efforts to drop the criminal charges brought against the mayor last year.
Adams distanced himself from the executive order and didn’t sign it himself after a federal judge last week specifically cited the agreement with the Trump administration to allow ICE onto Rikers when accusing Department of Justice prosecutors and the mayor of striking an agreement in the case, which the judge reluctantly dismissed last week.
In a statement issued on Tuesday evening, Mastro, who took office as first deputy mayor a little over a week ago, took credit for making the decision to allow ICE into the jails, which he claimed he made after “making an independent assessment of the facts and law.”
The first deputy mayor, who has also been tapped by Adams to lead the administration’s efforts regarding Rikers’ closure, said that ICE’s investigations would be limited to criminal matters and claimed that ICE’s work would focus specifically on targeting gangs, despite the fact that the mayor’s office would have no say over the scope of ICE’s work.
“I have personally visited Rikers Island multiple times since becoming first deputy mayor, met with Department of Correction officials, sat with federal law enforcement officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Agency, and Homeland Security, all of whom said they would welcome the opportunity to work directly with [DOC] investigators to develop criminal cases and coordinate on criminal investigations of violent transnational criminal gangs, designated as terrorist organizations, that pose a significant threat to our communities,” Mastro said.
According to the order, the office on Rikers Island would be made available to a slew of federal agencies, including the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
The order marks a return to Rikers for ICE, which operated out of an office in the jails until 2014, the year the sanctuary city laws were passed by the City Council. The law, which was signed by former Mayor Bill de Blasio, explicitly banned ICE from operating within the jails or in any city facility.
Adams spent nearly two months deliberating over the order, which he first pitched a day after federal prosecutors began their attempt at dismissing Adams’ criminal case. Over the past several weeks, he frequently deflected when asked about the status of the order. As recently as Tuesday, Adams said that while an executive order was “still coming,” he declined to give any more details.
“Once the administration releases something with any type of [executive orders] that we put out, we make it public,” he said during his weekly “off-topic” press conference less than 12 hours before the order was issued. “We don't keep our EOs secret. Once it's done, we release it.”
The mayor appeared to keep several city agencies in the dark during the crafting of the order, even if those agencies were relevant to its implementation.
In March, top officials with the DOC told the City Council during a budget hearing that the agency had yet to be consulted on the mayor’s controversial order.
“I've not seen an executive order,” DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie said at the time.
Councilmembers during the March hearing said they were concerned that officials like Maginley-Liddie didn’t have much information about the order, which they said they were bound to oppose.
On Wednesday, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is one of nearly a dozen Democratic candidates running for mayor, said that she felt the order issued on Tuesday was “deeply concerning.”
The speaker said the order was particularly alarming given the recent dismissal of the mayor’s criminal case, which federal Judge Dale Ho said “smacked of a bargain.”
“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,” the speaker said.
Speaker Adams also said that the Council was “closely reviewing the order, and is prepared to defend against violations of the law to protect the safety of all New Yorkers.”
The Legal Aid Society also said that it was considering bringing litigation against the Adams administration over the executive order.
“Granting ICE access to Rikers Island, a facility where New Yorkers — including noncitizens entitled to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence — are detained, is a severe breach of New York City’s sanctuary city principles and undermines essential constitutional due process rights that apply to all individuals, regardless of immigration status,” the public defense organization said in a statement. “Make no mistake, policies such as this executive order will have a chilling effect throughout the city, undermining public safety — which the mayor purports to prioritize above all else — by deterring noncitizens from seeking help or cooperating with law enforcement for fear of deportation.”
The mayor’s executive order comes as the Trump Administration has begun to send Venezuelan asylum seekers, many of whom they’ve claimed – without evidence – are gang members, to El Salvador under the guise of the Alien Enemies Act of 1789. On Wednesday, two judges separately imposed restrictions on the administration’s use of the wartime statute.
“We see on a daily basis how ICE enforcement violates peoples’ rights, separates families, and unlawfully detains people in dangerous conditions in locations far from their communities,” a spokesperson for the Brooklyn Defenders said in a statement. “This executive order shamefully allows ICE to leverage New York City property to target, surveil, and arrest people so that it can detain and remove them, which often happens without notice, legal justification, or process.”
