The New York City Council sued Mayor Eric Adams this week after he allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities to operate from Rikers Island.
“Today, in New York City a corrupt bargain is taking place in plain view: New York City Mayor Eric Adams, acting through his first deputy mayor, is using his official powers to pay off the Trump Administration for dropping criminal charges against him,” the lawsuit says. “The ‘purchase price’ — which was agreed to in advance and is now being proffered — is the safety and well-being of immigrant communities and all New Yorkers whose rights are protected by our City’s prized sanctuary laws.”
The council seeks to “stop Eric Adams’s flagrant abuse of the power of the mayoralty.”
According to the council, First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro’s signing of the executive order allowing ICE to return to Rikers Island is unlawful. “Mayor Adams denies having recused himself from the decision, and conflicts-of-interest laws that bar the compromised Mayor from himself taking official action also bar him from enlisting Mastro to do his bidding,” the filing says.
Earlier this month, Mastro wrote that the safety of New York City has been “jeopardized by violent transnational gangs and criminal enterprises—including transnational gangs such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua—that have been designated by federal authorities as foreign terrorist organizations.”
The order declares that “federal law enforcement agencies, including but not limited to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security Investigations, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service are hereby authorized to designate personnel to maintain office space on land over which DOC [Department of Correction] has jurisdiction for the purpose of criminal enforcement and criminal investigations only.”
Adams recently told Lara Trump that it is a “big mistake” of the “far-left philosophy” to label ICE as a “criminal organization.”
“They are not,” Adams stated. “They are part of our law enforcement community.”
