NEW YORK —
New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he will allow federal immigration officials to operate at the city’s Rikers Island jail following a meeting Thursday with President Donald Trump’s border czar.
Adams said he will issue an executive order reestablishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence at the complex — one of the nation’s largest and most notorious lockups — as had been the case under prior administrations.
The Democrat said ICE agents would be focused on assisting the corrections department’s intelligence bureau in criminal investigations, particularly those focused on violent criminals and gangs.
“As I have always said, immigrants have been crucial in building our city and will continue to be key to our future success, but we must fix our long-broken immigration system,” Adams said in a statement. “That is why I have been clear that I want to work with the new federal administration, not war with them, to find common ground and make better the lives of New Yorkers.”
Opponents dismissed the move as a “needless concession” and “legally dubious.”
“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,” Zach Ahmad, senior policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said.
Trump’s border czar, Thomas Homan, argued that having an ICE presence at local jails is crucial to removing violent criminals who have entered the country illegally.
“For the naysayers, the city council who wants nothing to do with ICE, they need to understand: If we arrest the bad guy at Rikers Island, then the alien’s safe, the officer’s safe, the community’s safe,” he said in an interview with NewsMax after the meeting.
Troubled relationship
Homan met with Adams at a federal office building in Manhattan as the Republican administration pushes for more help detaining and deporting people accused of crimes.
ICE has l