ICE returning to Rikers Island, Mayor Eric Adams says after Trump czar meeting

Mayor Eric Adams is preparing to return exiled federal immigration enforcers to the city’s Rikers Island jail complex, he said in a statement Thursday, hours after he met with President Donald Trump’s border czar about helping accelerate deportations.

Inviting back the U.S. Immigration and Enforcement agency, whose presence was terminated about a decade ago under Adams’ predecessor Bill de Blasio and sanctuary-city laws, would reflect a rightward shift in city policy.

“We are now working on implementing an executive order that will reestablish the ability for ICE agents to operate on Rikers Island — as was the case for 20 years — but now, instead, ICE agents would specifically be focused on assisting the correctional intelligence bureau in their criminal investigations, in particular those focused on violent criminals and gangs,” Adams said in the statement.

ICE’s imminent return comes three days after Trump’s Department of Justice ordered Manhattan federal prosecutors to dismiss the corruption prosecution of Adams, in part, so that the mayor could focus on helping with Trump’s immigration crackdown. On Thursday, the head of the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office resigned after refusing to carry out the dismissal.

Details of Adams’ forthcoming order, including how it would comport with the sanctuary-city laws, were not disclosed. Those laws prohibit nearly all cooperation except in limited circumstances, such as potential terrorists or those convicted of the most serious or violent crimes, and then only upon a valid judicial warrant.

Newsday reported in November that Adams’ administration had so far that year rejected 99% of federal immigration enforcers’ inquiries about immigrants who have been jailed, arrested, or are otherwise were under scrutiny by New York City.

Adams, in a series of TV news interviews late Thursday afternoon, defended his announcement. He disputed that those who aren’t “the worst of the worst” would be caught in an immigration dragnet.

“Let’s go where the dangerous people are and that is those who are arrested for a crime, those who are in our jail,” he told WPIX/11 News.

The border czar, Tom Homan, told Newsmax that Adams committed to him to return ICE to Rikers. Homan said that “naysayers” in the City Council who don’t want ICE on the island are putting other immigrants who aren’t criminals in deportation jeopardy.

“If we arrest the bad guy at Rikers Island, then the alien’s safe, the officer’s safe, the community’s safe. But if you release that public safety threat back into the public, what do I have to do? We gotta send law enforcement officers in that community, and we will find him. But when we find him, he’s gonna be with others, others who aren’t a criminal priority, but they’re gonna be in the country illegally, so we’re gonna arrest them too.”

In 2014, when the City Council was passing legislation to boot ICE, the council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, said the measure was particularly important for protecting low-level offenders from deportation and to keep families together.

“We’re a city that respects the constitutional rights of all of our residents,” she said in 2014.