New York City Council sues Mayor Adams over ICE at Rikers prison

(The Center Square) — The New York City Council has filed a lawsuit against Mayor Eric Adams over his decision to allow federal immigration agents to open an office at the Rikers Island prison, calling the deal “poisoned fruit” from an “illegal” agreement with the Trump administration.

The 29-page complaint, filed in New York state Supreme Court, alleges that the Adams administration’s executive order authorizing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration to set up office space at the notorious prison was illegal and done in response to the Trump administration’s move to drop federal bribery, and corruption charges against the Democratic mayor.

Speaker Adrienne Adams argues in the legal challenge that the move to allow ICE to set up shop at Rikers was a “quid pro quo” for the U.S. Department of Justice’s move to dismiss the mayor’s federal bribery case.

“This is a naked attempt by Eric Adams to fulfill his end of the bargain for special treatment he received from the Trump administration,” Speaker Adams, a Democrat, said in a statement. “New York cannot afford its mayor colluding with the Trump administration to violate the law, and this lawsuit looks to the court to uphold the basic standard of democracy, even if our mayor won’t.”

Lawyers for the council pointed out in the lawsuit that the mayor met with Trump’s border czar Tom Homan to discuss plans to invite ICE onto Rikers through an executive order on the same day the Justice Department announced it was dropping the federal indictments against him. One day later, Adams and Homan went on Fox News to announce the Rikers/ICE agreement, according to the lawsuit.

“The mayor’s ethical obligation to the city at that moment was clear,” the council’s lawyers wrote in the complaint. “Faced with such a clear perception of a conflict of interest-even if not an actual conflict of interest the appropriate response would have been to not issue an executive order permitting ICE on Rikers, or, at a bare minimum, to recuse himself from that decision. The Mayor did neither.”

The order, signed by New York City’s First Deputy Mayor Randy Maestro, re-established ICE at the prison after a decade-long hiatus. Federal immigration agents have been prohibited from having an office on Rikers since the city passed a bill in 2014 that restricts cooperation between ICE officials and the city’s Department of Corrections.

Mayor Adams, who is running for reelection as an independent candidate after bailing from the Democratic Party primary, delegated the role of enforcing the order to Maestro to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest over his federal indictment being dropped.

Adams administration officials stated in the order that federal agents are needed on Rikers to help the city combat “violent transnational gangs and criminal enterprises,” citing the Trump administration’s recent designation of MS-13 and Tren del Aragua as foreign terrorist organizations. It does not give ICE permission to carry out civil immigration enforcement or arrest people just for being undocumented.

A City Hall spokesperson called the council’s lawsuit “baseless and contrary to the public interest in protecting New Yorkers from violent criminals” and vowed to defend the decision to allow ICE to return to the island’s prison.

“We remain committed to our administration’s efforts to reduce crime and keep New Yorkers safe — we hope the City Council will join us in doing so,” Adams spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus said in the statement.