NYC mayor to allow immigration officials to operate at Rikers jail after Trump border czar meeting

[February 14, 2025]  By JAKE OFFENHARTZ and PHILIP MARCELO

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he will allow federal immigration officials to operate at the city’s Rikers Island jail following a meeting Thursday with President Donald Trump’s border czar.

Adams said he will issue an executive order reestablishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence at the complex — one of the nation’s largest and most notorious lockups — as had been the case under prior administrations.

The Democrat said ICE agents would be focused on assisting the correction department’s intelligence bureau in criminal investigations, particularly those focused on violent criminals and gangs.

“As I have always said, immigrants have been crucial in building our city and will continue to be key to our future success, but we must fix our long-broken immigration system,” Adams said in a statement. “That is why I have been clear that 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.”

Opponents dismissed the move as a “needless concession” and “legally dubious.”

“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,” Zach Ahmad, senior policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said.

Trump's border czar Thomas Homan argued that having an ICE presence at local jails is crucial to removing violent criminals who have entered the country illegally.

“For the naysayers, the city council who wants nothing to do with ICE, they need to understand: If we arrest the bad guy at Rikers Island, then the alien’s safe, the officer’s safe, the community’s safe,” he said in an interview with NewsMax after the meeting.

New York City and agency have had troubled relationship

Homan met with Adams at a federal office building in Manhattan as the Republican administration pushes for more help detaining and deporting people accused of crimes.

ICE has long had a contentious relationship with New York, which has rules and laws limiting police cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

Immigration officials, for example, aren't able to request city jails hold people wanted for civil immigration law violations past when they would ordinarily be released from custody, under city policy.

New York City has also passed measures that curtail ICE’s access to public schools and other city properties.

Adams, who faces a Democratic primary in June, has said he favors loosening these so-called sanctuary policies, but he doesn’t have the broad power to do so as mayor.

Adams said he talked with Homan about ways to embed more New York police detectives into federal task forces focused on violent gangs and criminal activity, as well as allowing ICE agents to participate in regular meetings with law enforcement agencies in the city.

This image provided by Office of the Mayor of New York, shows President Donald Trump's border czar Thomas Homan, left, and New York Mayor Adams, right, and others, meeting in New York, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025. (Ed Reed/Office of the Mayor of New York via AP)

“We walked away with some real tangible things we can do together, and I’m looking forward to aligning with him and other federal partners to remove dangerous people from our streets,” he said in a radio show interview after the meeting.

Mayor under pressure to cooperate

The Democrat is under unique pressure to cooperate with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

On Monday, the U.S. Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors in Manhattan to dismiss corruption charges against Adams so he could focus on assisting the president’s immigration agenda.

As of Thursday, the criminal charges remained in place. If the case is ultimately dropped, the Justice Department says it will conduct a review after the November mayoral election to assess whether it should be reinstated.

Immigration advocates worry Adams might feel pressure from the Trump administration to disregard or rescind some of the city’s sanctuary protections, which come from a patchwork of state and city laws and mayoral executive orders, some stretching back decades.

Adams has already ordered city officials to lawfully cooperate with Trump’s agenda around immigration and other issues, though the administration’s instructions have sparked confusion among some city workers and contractors.

Adams confirmed later that he also discussed with Homan restoring more than $80 million meant to defray the city's costs for sheltering homeless migrants that the Federal Emergency Management Agency unexpectedly clawed back Wednesday.

“I’m not happy about losing $80 million, and we had a conversation on that,” he said during a local television interview.

The Adams administration has leased several hotels and vacant buildings and repurposed them as migrant shelters as the city has tried to house an estimated 230,000 people who have arrived from the U.S. southern border in recent years.

Adams reflects on challenges he faces

In a local radio interview after the meeting, Adams also reflected on the week’s turn of events with a mix of relief and defiance.

“I did nothing wrong. No American should endure what I had to endure,” he said on WABC, referring to the “humiliation and embarrassment” of the months-long federal corruption probe.

As he gears up for a bruising primary fight, Adams said he wants New Yorkers to see his resiliency.

“We’ve all gone through some hard times,” he said. “No matter what you’re going through, have faith in yourself, faith in God, faith in your family, faith in your country and you will navigate through it.”

___

Associated Press reporter Cedar Attanasio in New York contributed to this report.

All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved