‘Queens chooses not to comply’: Richards rebukes Trump at inauguration

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards invoked Queens’ contribution to the civil rights movement while bashing President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign during his inauguration address on Sunday. Eagle photo by Walter Karling

By Jacob Kaye

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards slammed the Trump administration’s deportation efforts while celebrating Queens’ diversity during his inauguration celebration over the weekend.

Richards, who was sworn into his second full term in office on Sunday, said that Queens “chooses not to comply” with the Trump administration’s heavy-handed approach to immigration enforcement, which has resulted in the deaths of multiple U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in recent weeks.

“Make no mistake, the Trump regime wants us to see our more than 1 million neighbors as poison,” Richards said. “Queens chooses not to comply, but to celebrate the fact that 190 countries are represented here in this borough, and Queens chooses to say in all 360 languages spoken here, that our diversity is our strength, it's not a weakness.”

“The white supremacists in Washington want to hoard the American Dream for themselves, but in Queens, we stand firm in our belief that the Haitian hairdresser, the Nigerian nurse and the Venezuelan vendor all have a right to live that dream,” added Richards.

The borough president’s remarks came at the top of his inauguration speech after he first acknowledged the setting for the celebration – Queens College. The CUNY school in Queens was central to a major moment in the civil rights movement six decades ago, which Richards, who has called for the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, recounted.

In 1964, a Queens College student named Andrew Goodman traveled to Mississippi to help register Black voters. Several weeks later, he and several others were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Following the killing, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to Queens College to deliver a speech in Goodman’s honor.

“In 1964, with our nation at a crossroads, Queens illuminated the path forward,” Richards said on Sunday. “And in 2026, we are doing it again.”

Richards has represented Queens, the most diverse county in the United States, since 2020. He won reelection to his second full term in November, picking up 70 percent of the vote and around 200,000 more votes than his Republican challenger, Henry Ikezi.

He is the first Black man to serve in the role and tied his own family’s story to that of the more than 1 million immigrants living in the World’s Borough.

“Don't tell Queens who belongs and who doesn't, because in this borough, we believe all 2.4 million of us deserve that chance,” he said. “We are the authors of our own stories here in Queens.”

Richards’ father immigrated to the United States from Jamaica. Coincidentally, he settled in Jamaica, Queens.

“This is the borough where the son of a Jamaican immigrant, born to teenage parents, can grow up in basement apartments, fall in with the wrong crowd, get shipped upstate to finish high school and still become the first Black man to be borough president in history,” the BP said.

Sunday’s inauguration was Richards' first major celebration since first becoming the borough’s top executive in 2020, the year he won a special election for the seat.

Though Richard won the race for his first full term in the office in 2021, both of his first two swearing-in ceremonies were pared back as a result of the pandemic.

He noted the stark difference between his first swearing-in and the one hosted over the weekend, which included remarks from Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, State Assemblymember Catalina Cruz, State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, City Comptroller Mark Levine, Attorney General Letitia James, and Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, who held the seat prior to Richards’ election.

“One thousand eight hundred and eighty days ago, I swore an oath to serve the borough of Queens to the best of my abilities,” he said. “The day was Dec. 2, 2020 and as I stand before you today, I can't help but think back in awe, just how starkly different that day was – no cheering crowds, no song and dance, no pomp and circumstance. It was just me, the city clerk and a communications staffer, just three people masked up in an empty office at Queens Borough Hall.”

“Outside those walls families were fighting for survival in a borough ravaged by a silent killer, COVID-19 was stealing hundreds of our loved ones each week,” he added.

Beyond COVID, Richards noted the change in the borough’s unemployment rate, which dropped from 25 percent to around 5.4 percent in the years he’s been in office, and in Queens’ overall economic outlook.

In the coming years, two casinos will be built in Queens, as will tens of thousands of new units of housing, including an entirely new neighborhood in Willets Point.

“We have become the true borough of live, work and play,” Richards said. “We did the impossible, Queens. We made Manhattan the outer borough.”

“There is truly no doubt that Queens is the future,” he added.