The City Council sued Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday in an attempt to block an executive order that permitted the Trump administration to open offices at the Rikers Island jail complex as part of its immigration crackdown.
The lawsuit argues that the executive order City Hall issued last week, which allows federal immigration agents to re-establish a presence at Rikers after being banned from the jail in 2014, is “part of a corrupt quid pro quo bargain” between the mayor and President Trump.
The Democratic-led City Council argued that Mr. Adams, who is also a Democrat, had abused the power of his office, and accused him of helping Mr. Trump enact his mass deportation agenda as payback for the Justice Department’s move to end the federal corruption case against the mayor.
“This is a naked attempt by Eric Adams to fulfill his end of the bargain for special treatment he received from the Trump administration,” Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is running against the mayor, said in a statement.
The lawsuit, filed in state court, set the stage for an extraordinary intraparty showdown between the City Council and Mr. Adams, who has grappled with blowback for embracing Mr. Trump and recently announced he would seek a second term as an independent in the November general election.
The litigation, if protracted or successful, could present a roadblock for the Trump administration in its efforts to regain access to New York City jails, which Thomas Homan, the president’s border czar, has repeatedly said is a priority as it seeks to deport immigrants accused of crimes. The mayor has rejected any notion of a quid pro quo and maintained his innocence.
In a statement, Kayla Mamelak Altus, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said that the lawsuit “seems baseless and contrary to the public interest in protecting New Yorkers from violent criminals.”
Referring to the mayor’s recent order, she said, “Executive Order 50 is expressly authorized by New York City’s local laws — the very laws enacted by the City Council.”
For years, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency had an office at Rikers, allowing it to easily transfer thousands of detained immigrants into federal custody each year to deport them. But ICE was banned from Rikers as result of a sanctuary law passed in 2014 under Mayor Bill de Blasio, which largely closed the deportation pipeline.
On April 8 — following several meetings between Mr. Adams and Mr. Homan, and about a week after a judge dismissed the five-count indictment faced by the mayor — the first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, issued the executive order, allowing ICE and other federal agencies to reopen offices at Rikers. Mr. Adams delegated the issue to Mr. Mastro to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest amid concerns that the mayor was beholden to the president.
The executive order sought to limit the presence of ICE at Rikers. It said that federal agents would be allowed there only to conduct federal “criminal investigations,” particularly into transnational gangs, and not to undertake routine enforcement of federal immigration laws, which are primarily civil matters. The order seemed to comply with the 2014 sanctuary law, which allows federal agencies to operate in city jails for such purposes.
The City Council did not accuse Mr. Adams of violating the sanctuary laws, instead arguing that the executive order was issued unlawfully. The lawsuit said that the mayor did not follow the City Charter in delegating executive power to Mr. Mastro, adding that “no mayor has ever delegated executive order powers, and no executive order has been signed by anyone but the mayor.” It also argued that delegating the issue to Mr. Mastro did not rid the mayor of a conflict of interest.
The lawsuit said that “all available evidence confirms that the issuance of Executive Order 50 was the outcome demanded by the resolution of the mayor’s criminal case, rather than the product of any ‘independent assessment by Mastro.’”
Ms. Mamelak Altus disputed those claims, saying that Mr. Mastro had reached the decision independently to “target violent transnational gangs now present in our city, including those designated as terrorist organizations.” She said that Mr. Mastro had conducted “a thorough and independent assessment — which included multiple visits to Rikers Island, conversations with federal law enforcement and our own Department of Correction officers, and more.”
The lawsuit pointed to a public statement made by Mr. Homan that it said suggested that ICE would “undoubtedly” use Rikers to fuel its mass deportation agenda, going beyond the scope of the executive order, a concern echoed by civil rights groups and immigration lawyers. Before 2014, many immigrants without convictions or who had been accused of minor crimes were deported after being transferred to ICE from Rikers — a main reason Democrats banned the agency from the jail a decade ago.
“Executive Order 50 is a blank check,” the lawsuit concluded. “Its ostensible limitations are a farce written in erasable ink. Once ICE re-establishes a presence on Rikers Island, it will have no regard for the city’s laws.”
Luis Ferré-Sadurní is a Times reporter covering immigration, focused on the influx of migrants arriving in the New York region.
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