Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be allowed access to New York City’s Rikers Island as the city bends to the new policies of President Donald Trump.
The change was announced by Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday. Corruption charges against Adams that had been filed by the Biden-era Department of Justice have been dropped by the Trump administration.
“Today, I met with ‘Border Czar’ Tom Homan and local federal law enforcement officials to discuss how we can work together to remove violent migrant gangs from our city,” Adams said in a statement on his website.
“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 — but now, instead, ICE agents would specifically be focused on assisting the correctional intelligence bureau in their criminal investigations, in particular those focused on violent criminals and gangs,” he said.
Adams noted that after spending $7 billion on illegal immigrants “with little help from the previous administration,” it is time for a change.
“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,” Adams said.
“It was clear that the border czar had a lot of angst, a lot of concerns, a lot of just uncertainty what was happening here in the city,” Adams told WNBC. “And we walked out with a clear understanding of how we can work together.”
“We had to understand all the legal parameters to put ICE back on Rikers Island, which we think is a smart thing to do. Today we shared with them, ICE will be back on Rikers Island to deal with the criminal aspect of investigation.”
Is this the beginning of the end of sanctuary cities?
“They’re also going to be embedded in our gang and criminal task force on Rikers Island that the police department and Department of Corrections that are now a part of,” he explained.
Critics attacked the change.
“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,” said Zach Ahmad, senior policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Adams said, Homan’s message was, “Eric, there are dangerous people on our streets in this country in general, but specifically here in New York City, we want to work with you to get them off your streets.”
Adams said, he viewed the arrangement as letting the federal government do its job.
“Immigration is a federal enforcement, not a city enforcement. That is why we told our city employees: Do not do anything that is going to impede them executing their jobs. I am not going to allow my city employees to be exposed to obstruction on a federal level, which is a five-year prison sentence,” he said.
Some New York City council members are behind Homan, according to the New York Post.
“He wants absolute cooperation,” Republican Councilwoman Vickie Paladino of Queens said.
“The border czar wants to know where these gang members and criminal migrants are,” Paladino said. “They go from shelter to shelter to shelter. ICE wants to grab them as soon as they come out of that turnstile system we’ve got.”
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.