City Council lays groundwork to sue mayor for bringing ICE to Rikers
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City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has begun to explore the possibility of suing Mayor Eric Adams’ administration after it signed an executive order allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to conduct criminal investigations on Rikers Island. Photo by Emil Cohen/NYC Council Media Unit
By Jacob Kaye
The City Council on Thursday laid the groundwork to sue the mayor over his administration’s controversial executive order allowing federal immigration agents onto Rikers Island, a move that lawmakers say could be a violation of the city’s sanctuary city laws.
The Council passed a resolution this week “authorizing the speaker to take legal action” to “defend against the Adams administration’s violation of sanctuary city laws.” According to City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is one of around a dozen Democratic candidates running for mayor, the resolution would also allow the Council to explore the possibility of suing President Donald Trump’s administration for its “attacks on the City of New York.”
The resolution comes two days after Mayor Eric Adams’ top deputy, Randy Mastro, signed an executive order allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to open an office on Rikers Island. ICE agents last operated in the city’s secluded jail complex a decade ago before being banned from the island when the Council passed its 2014 sanctuary city laws.
The speaker said on Thursday that the resolution was only a first step in the process toward a potential lawsuit. The Council passed a similar resolution last year in the lead up to an ongoing suit it brought against the mayor over his administration’s refusal to implement a city law banning solitary confinement in the jails.
But a lawsuit over the mayor’s executive order passed this week may be some ways away – the details regarding ICE’s presence on Rikers have yet to be fully fleshed out, according to the Adams administration.
Still, the speaker said the Council was set to take a look at several elements of the order which may or may not have run afoul of city law.
“We're going to look at this because the executive order completely violates the statutory city law,” the speaker said before the Council’s meeting. “We are taking a strong look.”
The speaker said just as concerning was that the executive order appeared to be a favor from the mayor to Trump in exchange for the dismissal of the criminal charges Mayor Adams faced until last week.
Federal Judge Dale Ho said in his decision to drop the charges against the mayor that the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss the case “smacked of a bargain,” specifically pointing to the mayor’s promise to open up Rikers Island to ICE, which he first made in February, a day after the DOJ said they no longer wanted to pursue the criminal case.
“Make no mistake about it, it looks like [the executive order] was brought about because of the relationship that the mayor has with the Trump administration,” the speaker said Thursday. “We don't trust the Trump administration and this is where this is coming from.”
“Why would we possibly trust them to get this right with ICE?” she added.
To avoid the perception of a conflict of interest, the mayor recused himself from the signing of the executive order and delegated the duty to Mastro, who officially took over as first deputy mayor last week after the Council threatened to reject his nomination as the city’s top lawyer last year. Mastro this week took full credit for the order’s creation and implementation, despite the fact that the mayor first promised that the order was on its way well over a month before Mastro was given the job.
The prominent attorney defended the mayor’s move on Thursday, claiming that the order will stand up to legal muster because it limits ICE to conduct only criminal investigations, and not civil investigations, which the city’s sanctuary laws prohibit.
“It is only for criminal enforcement and expressly excludes civil matters, so that is not permitted under the executive order, and that is not going to happen under the executive order,” Mastro said.
But what exactly will happen under the executive order remains to be seen.
The city is currently in the process of drafting a memorandum of understanding with the federal government about the specifics of ICE’s – or other federal agencies’ – work on Rikers, including how many officers will be allowed on the island and where they’ll work.
Mastro also claimed the order would require ICE to focus on investigations involving alleged members of transnational gangs, like MS-13, matching rhetoric used by the Trump administration to justify its potentially illegal efforts to send people in ICE custody to a prison in El Salvador.
