Federal immigration authorities will be allowed to open office spaces at the Rikers Island Prison Complex for criminal investigations, according to an executive order issued Tuesday by Mayor Eric Adams' administration.
The order issued by First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro came almost two months after Mr Adams announced he would allow immigrants and customs enforcement agencies to enter prison to assist with criminal investigations.
Mastro, appointed weeks ago, was permitted by Adams to determine “what circumstances and under those circumstances” that would allow federal agents to enter the prison complex as per the order. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, cigarettes, firearms, explosives and other federal agencies are granted the same privileges as ice.
The federal agency will “coordinate with the Department of Corrections' Criminal Information Office for violent offenders and gangs, crimes committed or promoted in DOC custody, and drug trafficking,” the order said.
“This directive is driven by just one priority and one priority to keep all New Yorkers safe,” Mastro said in a statement. “After making an independent assessment of facts and law, I came to this decision.”
The executive order, first reported by CBS News, met Swift Rebuke by Adrienne Adams, chairman of the New York City Council. Adams, who is running for mayor, called the move “deeply concerned.” Adams, who is not associated with the mayor in the city's law, said:
Adams first signalled the move after a meeting with President Trump's border emperor Thomas Homan in February. The meeting was seen as an early test of the mayor's relationship with the Trump administration and the extent to which Adams owed it.
Federal prosecutors have rescinded the charges of corruption against him on the basis that it could hinder prosecutors' cooperation with the Trump administration's immigration program.
In her statement, Adams pointed to what he called “a series of very troublesome recent events between the Trump administration and our mayor.”
“I don't think this lawsuit is related to the mayor's firing of the case and his willingness to work with Trump's extreme deportation agenda, which excludes residents without justification or justification,” she said.
Getting the Rikers free to ice can help the Trump administration achieve its goal of massive deportation in cities where foreign-born people live.
Ice previously had an office on Rikers Island, allowing the city to transfer undocumented immigrants who were jailed there to federal custody. In 2014, the city passed a Sanctuary Act that banned ice from prisons.
Adams complained about the burden of immigrants placed in New York City long before the end of the corruption incident against him.
For the past few months he has been asking for a way to allow Rikers to have ice agents without violating city sanctuary laws. One of the 2014 laws allows him to grant access to federal immigration authorities “for purposes unrelated to enforcement of the Civil Immigration Act.” He entrusted that power to Mr. Mastro.
Adams' administration's move “runs the city's long-standing sanctuary law,” Murad Awaude, president of the New York Immigration Union, said in a statement.
“Trump has detained people across the country without legitimate procedures and disappeared,” the Adams administration “is rolling out a welcome mat for violating New Yorkers' civil rights and violating them,” Awaude said.
