Metropolis Council Speaker Adrienne Adams rallies in Foley Sq. with council members and advocates to rejoice a state choose extending an order to dam Immigration and Customs Enforcement from re-establishing places of work on Rikers Island. Friday, April 25, 2025.
Photograph by Lloyd Mitchell
A state choose on Friday prolonged an order barring Mayor Eric Adams’ administration from permitting federal immigration authorities to re-establish places of work on Rikers Island, handing a win to the Metropolis Council that filed a lawsuit April 15 looking for to dam the transfer.
Decide Mary Rosado on April 25 prolonged a short lived restraining order (TRO) she issued earlier this week that can proceed to dam the Adams administration’s govt order permitting federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to carry places of work throughout the Rikers Island jail complicated for the primary time in over a decade. The town kicked ICE off Rikers with the passage of a 2014 sanctuary metropolis regulation that barred the company from working inside city-run jails, as a way of defending undocumented immigrants from deportation.
The choose prolonged the order till the following courtroom listening to within the case, scheduled Might 29, based on courtroom data.
“Until we have that hearing, I’m going to continue the TRO,” Decide Rosado mentioned.
The choose’s choice supplied an early victory to the Metropolis Council in its efforts to halt ICE from returning to Rikers Island. She seemed to be receptive to arguments from the council’s outdoors legal professional — Daniel Kornstein — that extending the restraining order is just “maintaining the status quo.”
“This represents an important step by the court to protect public safety in our city and keep all New Yorkers safe,” the speaker mentioned. “It validates our efforts to defend New York City from being made even more vulnerable to the Trump administration’s extreme agenda of unconstitutional activities by blocking the mayor from enabling these attacks on the safety and rights of the people he is supposed to represent.”
Mayor Adams’ Frist Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro — who signed the manager after the mayor delegated the duty to him — mentioned the administration was “disappointed” by Rosado’s ruling. He pushed again on Kornstein’s declare that the transfer merely preserves the established order, noting that the order’s acknowledged objective is to make it simpler for federal authorities to focus on felony gangs.
“It’s not maintaining the status quo,” Mastro mentioned. “It’s preventing the city from protecting itself against violent, transnational criminal gangs that have been declared terrorist organizations and cooperating with federal law enforcement in criminal investigations. This is a delay, but we will continue to pursue our legal rights.”
First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro.Photograph by Lloyd Mitchell
Mastro and the administration’s legal professional James Catterson each painted the council’s swimsuit as a “political diatribe masquerading as a lawsuit.”
Of their swimsuit, the council’s legal professionals argue the order was the product of a “corrupt bargain” between the mayor’s non-public protection legal professional and the Trump Justice Division to drop his felony indictment — a transfer they cost violates town’s conflicts of curiosity regulation.
“The conflict of interest makes it impossible for the mayor to do what he is trying to do here and makes the executive order illegal, null and void,” Kornstein mentioned in courtroom.
Mayor Adams, his legal professional, and senior DOJ officers have disputed that there was any quid professional quo.
But the mayor introduced his intention to signal the order just some days after the DOJ issued a memo calling for his expenses to be dropped in February. And Mastro solely signed the directive after Federal District Decide Dale Ho formally dropped the case earlier this month.
Moreover, the council alleges that despite the fact that Adams delegated the duty of signing the directive to Mastro, he didn’t really take away himself from the method.
Mastro mentioned he signed the order after conducting an “independent review” and that it’s “narrowly tailored” to permit collaboration between ICE, together with different federal businesses, and town Division of Correction on felony investigations however not civil immigration enforcement issues.
The primary deputy mayor mentioned town and the federal authorities have nonetheless but to hash out a memorandum of understanding that he says would explicitly dictate what ICE will and will be unable to do on Rikers.
Nonetheless, council leaders concern that just by permitting ICE to function on Rikers, the company will inevitably find yourself making an attempt to spherical up migrants who haven’t been accused of committing violent crimes for deportation, in violation of town’s sanctuary legal guidelines. The council and their attorneys have argued that they don’t belief the Trump administration to abide by any settlement they enter into with town.
Kornstein pointed to Trump border czar Tom Homan’s pledges to pursue undocumented immigrants no matter native sanctuary legal guidelines like New York’s.
“Tom Homan said…sanctuary laws have to be gotten around,” Kornstein mentioned. “Then he said he wants everyone, not just major criminals, he said even shoplifters. He wants them all.”
