The Adams Administration is Allowing ICE on Rikers Island for the First Time in Over a Decade. If We Don’t Act, Unfettered Deportations Will Be the Result.

Bronx, NY—On Tuesday, the Adams administration issued an executive order establishing office space for Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Rikers Island, contravening longstanding city law. The order acknowledges that sanctuary law prevents ICE from carrying out the initiatives of federal immigration enforcement on Rikers and suggests that ICE’s activity on the island will be contained to criminal investigations. The Adams administration cited “transnational gangs” as justification for the order, the same infamous excuse used by the Trump administration to deport hundreds of people to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador without due process. 

In response to this attempted attack on sanctuary protections, The Bronx Defenders issued the following statement: 

“The executive order operates on the fiction that our immigration system can facilitate a moral, discerning campaign of mass deportation that only targets ‘bad’ immigrants. As public defenders, we know that our legal systems are not capable of such a thing. When ICE was last present on Rikers, it used its access to threaten and coerce immigrants, indiscriminately funnel them into detention, and trap people into an unjust, never-ending cycle of detention: unable to resolve their criminal cases because ICE would not bring them to court and unable to escape ICE detention because  immigration judges would deny bond on the sole basis of an open criminal case. 

“City law definitively prohibits the use of office space on Rikers Island for civil immigration enforcement. By issuing this executive order, the Adams administration is not only ignoring the law but also attempting to return us to a time when ICE used unfettered access to the city’s jails to detain and deport New Yorkers without due process. It is up to the City Council to forcefully challenge this gross violation of sanctuary law and ensure this attack on basic civil rights is stopped.” 

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