A state judge on Friday indefinitely blocked Mayor Eric Adams from letting federal immigration authorities open an office at the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City, a priority for the Trump administration as it seeks to expand its immigration crackdown.
The City Council had sued the Adams administration on April 15 in an effort to halt the return of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to Rikers Island. The Council argued that letting ICE into the city’s largest jail facilities, a decade after the agency was banned from Rikers, would lead to mass deportations.
Friday’s action by Justice Mary Rosado of State Supreme Court in Manhattan represented the third time she had sided with the City Council. In April, she had temporarily blocked the mayor’s efforts, and then extended the short-term block. The latest ruling — a preliminary injunction — is a longer-term order and will be in place until the judge reaches a decision.
In an 18-page ruling, the judge found that the City Council had “shown a likelihood of success” because of its argument about the appearance of a quid pro quo between the Trump administration and Mr. Adams. The mayor had moved to allow ICE into Rikers shortly after the Justice Department dropped corruption charges against him.
The two-month legal fight has pitted Mr. Adams against fellow Democrats who control the City Council. While the case is far from over, the City Council cast the ruling on Friday as a victory.
“Over the past months, we’ve witnessed the Trump administration repeatedly disregard the U.S. Constitution, disappearing residents within our country without due process and wrongfully arresting local government officials,” Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker, said in a statement. “This attempted corrupt bargain to allow ICE to set up a center on Rikers would only make our city, and all New Yorkers, less safe.”
Justice Rosado ordered Mr. Adams not to sign any agreements with ICE or other federal agencies that are interested in opening offices at Rikers, which would give the Trump administration a greater foothold in the city’s 400-acre jail complex and open a new front in the federal government’s immigration crackdown in New York. ICE agents in the city have already conducted hundreds of arrests in homes, immigration courts and the agency’s Manhattan offices.
Mr. Adams has sought to work with President Trump to enact his immigration agenda but has run up against New York City’s sanctuary laws, which limit cooperation between the city and the federal government on immigration. After the mayor met several times with the president’s border czar, Mr. Adams’s first deputy mayor issued an executive order that would allow ICE back into Rikers for the first time since the agency was kicked out because of a sanctuary law passed in 2014.
In a statement, Randy Mastro, the first deputy mayor who issued the Rikers executive order, said that City Hall was confident it would prevail. He said the executive order complied with the sanctuary laws, and that there was no conflict of interest as the City Council has alleged.
“Let’s be crystal clear: This executive order is about the criminal prosecution of violent transnational gangs committing crimes in our city,” Mr. Mastro said. “Our administration has never, and will never, do anything to jeopardize the safety of law-abiding immigrants, and this executive order ensures their safety as well.”
The executive order was relatively narrow, allowing ICE and other federal agencies to open offices at the jail complex only in pursuit of criminal investigations, such as taking down gangs, and not to deport immigrants who are in violation of federal immigration laws, which are typically civil matters.
Immigration activists and top Democratic officials, including those who control the City Council, opposed the executive order from the mayor’s office. They argued that allowing ICE back into Rikers, even under narrow circumstances, would open the door for federal agents to deport immigrants detained there. They pointed to the thousands of immigrants whom ICE deported from Rikers, many with no criminal convictions or only minor violations, when the agency had an office there.
In suing the mayor, the City Council accused Mr. Adams of engaging in “a corrupt quid pro quo bargain” with the Trump administration. The Council said that by allowing ICE back into Rikers, Mr. Adams was returning a favor after the Department of Justice ended a federal corruption case against him in April.
The mayor, who is running for re-election as an independent, has denied the existence of a quid pro quo and has argued that collaborating with ICE to go after transnational gangs was a matter of public safety. Ms. Adams, the Council speaker, is also running for mayor.
Lawyers for City Hall argued that the City Council’s lawsuit was premature because ICE had yet to open offices on Rikers Island. The lawsuit, City Hall argued, was based on speculation that ICE might break local sanctuary laws once in Rikers, rather than “concrete proof” of violations.
ICE was banned from Rikers in 2014 after the mayor at the time, Bill de Blasio, signed sanctuary laws that also made it much harder for the city to transfer custody of immigrants in city jails to federal authorities, largely ending the practice.
Civil rights groups and immigration lawyers raised concerns that letting ICE back into Rikers could lead federal agents to operate inside the jail with free rein and little oversight as they race to boost deportations.
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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