NY Metropolis Council sues Adams over plan to place ICE officers on Rikers – NBC New York

New York Metropolis lawmakers are suing to dam Mayor Eric Adams from permitting federal immigration brokers to function inside the Rikers Island jail advanced.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the Metropolis Council, accuses Adams of agreeing to the plan to “repay” the Trump administration in change for dropping prison prices towards him.

It argues that the manager order, which permits Immigration and Customs Enforcement and different federal companies to keep up workplace area on the jail, violates town’s prohibition on public officers utilizing their workplace for private profit.

In an emailed assertion, mayoral spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus mentioned town would evaluation the council’s lawsuit. She added that it “appears baseless and opposite to the general public curiosity in defending New Yorkers from violent criminals.”

Adams has repeatedly denied making any cope with the Trump administration over the prison case.

ICE brokers beforehand had a presence on the Rikers Island facility, which is on a hard-to-reach island within the East River, however they had been successfully banned from working there in 2014 below New York Metropolis’s sanctuary legal guidelines.

In December final yr, Adams instructed Fox Information after a gathering with President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan that Homan would really like entry to Rikers, and his administration was wanting into “exceptions” to the sanctuary legislation.

In February, following one other assembly with Homan, Adams introduced he would as soon as once more permit ICE brokers within the jail advanced to help with gang and drug-related investigations.

The assembly got here days after the Justice Division had ordered federal prosecutors in Manhattan to dismiss Adams’ prices. The next day, the request was made to a federal court docket, a transfer that immigrant rights teams and Adams’ critics instantly forged as a quid professional quo.

Adams introduced he would deputize his first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, to deal with all decision-making across the return of ICE to Rikers Island, so as to “guarantee there was by no means even the looks of any battle.”

Because of this, the April 8 govt order authorizing ICE’s return to Rikers Island was signed by Mastro, relatively than Adams.

Of their lawsuit, the Metropolis Council members mentioned that delegation was each illegal and unprecedented.

“No mayor has ever delegated govt order powers, and no govt order has been signed by anybody however the mayor,” the grievance states.

Adams, a Democrat working for reelection as an unbiased, has more and more warmed to Trump since November, riling critics who say he needs to be doing extra to dam the administration’s crackdown on immigrants.

Among the many many candidates in search of to exchange him as mayor within the upcoming election is Adrienne Adams, the present speaker of the Metropolis Council.

“The mayor has compromised our metropolis’s sovereignty and is now threatening the protection of all New Yorkers, which is why we’re submitting this lawsuit to halt his unlawful order that he shamelessly previewed on the Fox Information sofa with Tom Homan,” Adrienne Adams mentioned in a press release Tuesday. “When New Yorkers are afraid of cooperating with our metropolis’s personal police and discouraged from reporting crime and in search of assist, it makes everybody in our metropolis much less protected.”