A Decade After Kicking ICE Off Rikers, Mayor Adams Is Reopening the Door to Deportation. The City Council Must Stop Him.

Bronx, NY – Yesterday, Mayor Eric Adams, after meeting with Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan to discuss immigration enforcement in New York City, announced an Executive Order to allow ICE to return to Rikers Island, where they have been banned from having an office for over a decade. The Bronx Defenders issued the following statement in response:

“Exactly ten years ago today, on Valentine’s Day, ICE’s trailer on Rikers Island was shut down. Yet rather than celebrate this historic milestone, the Mayor is rolling back the clock as he attempts to reopen the door to deportation in New York City jails.

“City law prohibits ICE from operating on Rikers for good reason. When ICE had access to the jail, they used it to surveil, intimidate, and conduct uncounseled interviews in an inherently coercive setting; allowing them to extract admissions about nationality and immigration status, and then using those statements to justify detention and deportation.

“That is why New York City passed sanctuary laws—not to grant special privileges, but to impose basic legal protections of due process in a system that otherwise offers none.

“Mayor Adams’ proposed Executive Order shatters that safeguard. He claims ICE will ‘only assist’ the Department of Correction (DOC) in ‘criminal investigations,’ rather than engage in civil immigration enforcement, but that is just an attempt to break the law without accountability. The DOC has already ignored the City’s sanctuary laws, illegally detaining New Yorkers past the legal limit and transferring them to ICE without judicial warrants.

“The City Council must act. This is about more than ICE on Rikers—it is about a Mayor who ignores laws meant to protect New Yorkers. If he can subvert sanctuary protections, what stops him from undermining other laws that protect civil rights, due process, and basic freedoms?

“Impunity only happens if we allow it. The City Council and state leaders must act now to stop this unlawful and dangerous move.”

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