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NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams ' administration is allowing federal immigration officials to operate at Rikers Island to work on gang and drug-related criminal investigations in the city's largest lockup.
But immigrant rights groups and Adams’ critics cast the Tuesday executive order as a concerning quid pro quo after federal prosecutors dropped corruption charges against the Democrat so he could help support the Republican President Donald Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration.
Adams announced plans to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to resume operations at the jail in February after meeting with Trump border czar Tom Homan, though details of the arrangement weren’t released until Tuesday's order.
The Rikers Island jail complex, on a hard-to-reach island in the East River, has long suffered from rampant disorder and neglect and faces a possible federal takeover.
The order authorizes ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division, which focuses on transnational crime, to have an office at the jail to work with city corrections officials on criminal investigations and “related intelligence sharing” efforts focused on violent criminals and gangs, crimes committed in jails and drug trafficking.
ICE used to have a presence on Rikers to facilitate the transfer of immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally into federal custody for deportation. But the city’s 2014 sanctuary law effectively banned ICE operations in its jails.
The order from the mayor's office also allows other federal agencies, including the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, to have office space at the jail to assist with gang and drug-related investigations.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said the Rikers decision is among a series of “highly troubling recent events” since Adams' criminal charges were dropped.
“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 council speaker said in a statement.
The Democrat, who is not related to the mayor and is challenging him in the upcoming election, said the council is reviewing the order to see if it conforms with the city’s sanctuary law.
Mayor Adams brushed aside suggestions of a quid pro quo.
“There is no beholdening,” he said during a radio interview Wednesday.
The mayor also stressed that the order expressly states that federal officers operating at Rikers would not be allowed to conduct immigration enforcement that isn’t related to criminal cases.
“We cannot collaborate with ICE on civil enforcement, but we can for criminal enforcement. That is what we are doing,” he told WINS. “That’s in complete conformity with the law.”
Randy Mastro, Adams’ first deputy mayor who issued the order, noted the city had a similar arrangement with ICE more than a decade ago. This time, though, the focus will be exclusively on criminal investigations, he said.
“This is about public safety and protecting all New Yorkers,” Mastro said in a statement.
But the Legal Aid Society, which provides free legal counsel to low-income New Yorkers, argued the order would undermine constitutional due process rights, which apply to everyone in the U.S., regardless of immigration status.
They also suggested it would impact public safety efforts by deterring noncitizens from seeking help or cooperating with law enforcement for fear of deportation.
The New York Civil Liberties Union dismissed the executive order as a “needless concession” to the Trump administration.
“It’s worth repeating that ICE’s presence on Rikers serves no legitimate purpose, and opens the door to unlawful collusion between local law enforcement and federal immigration officials in violation of our city’s well-established sanctuary protections,” the organization said in a statement.
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Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.
