By Chris Sommerfeldt
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — After meeting with President Donald Trump’s top border official, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Thursday he’s taking executive action to allow federal immigration agents to “operate” on Rikers Island — a move that appears to fly in the face of New York City’s sanctuary laws.
Adams made the startling announcement in a written statement released by his office hours after he met privately with Tom Homan , the president’s “border czar.”
“We are now working on implementing an executive order that will reestablish the ability for ICE agents to operate on Rikers Island — as was the case for 20 years,” Adams’ statement said.
The statement added that ICE agents allowed onto Rikers “would specifically be focused on assisting the correctional intelligence bureau in their criminal investigations, in particular those focused on violent criminals and gangs.”
In his meeting with Homan, Adams said they also “discussed ways to embed more New York Police Department detectives into federal task forces, focusing on these violent gangs and criminal activity.”
It’s unclear what the mayor was referencing in saying ICE agents were allowed onto Rikers for 20 years. ICE was established as an agency in 2003.
Under ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city strengthened its sanctuary laws in 2014 to prohibit the ability of ICE agents to maintain offices on Rikers for the purposes of immigration enforcement.
Spokespeople for the mayor didn’t immediately return requests for comment on how his planned executive order would jibe with that law.
Adams’ announcement comes as his federal corruption indictment is in the process of being dismissed by Trump’s Department of Justice.
In a highly unusual order Monday, Trump’s DOJ directed that Adams’ case be dropped for now, while also directing it should be reviewed for potential re-prosecution after November’s mayoral election.
In the interim, the DOJ wrote in Monday’s order that dropping the case will enable Adams to help advance Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda, which includes pledges to launch “mass deportations” of all undocumented people in the country.
That unconventional caveat in the dismissal order has led many legal experts as well as Adams critics and one-time allies to argue that the mayor is beholden to Trump and required to carry out his agenda or face legal repercussions.
“It seems overtly intended to serve as a continued instrument of blackmail against our city’s mayor to serve as an arm of the Trump administration,” Council Speaker Adrienne Adams told reporters at City Hall on Thursday. “This leaves the mayor of our city compromised and we know the intentions of the Trump administration. This is bad for New York City . This is bad for New Yorkers.”
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