NYC Council speaker gets ready for potential legal action over ICE on Rikers

Newly emboldened by her New York City Council colleagues to sue Mayor Eric Adams and the Trump administration for sanctuary law violations, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams is gearing up for a potential fight. 

“It is the council’s responsibility to stand up for New Yorkers and we intend to continue doing so today,” Speaker Adams said at a Thursday press conference, referencing the newly introduced resolution intended to give her the authority to take on the mayor and president on behalf of the entire City Council. 

The resolution, which easily passed through the City Council later that afternoon, comes after newly installed First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro signed a controversial executive order Tuesday to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement and several other federal agencies to reestablish offices on Rikers Island. For years, ICE worked out of a small facility on the jails complex to identify undocumented incarcerated people and transfer them for deportation – that is until 2014, when the City Council passed a sanctuary city law to bar federal immigration authorities from the premises. 

The City Council’s resolution argues that the executive order reinstating ICE’s access to Rikers Island may violate the 2014 law, infringing the city’s sanctuary city laws, which prohibit most coordination between city agencies and federal immigration authorities. Seeking to distance himself from the matter, Mayor Adams recused himself and delegated the decision to Mastro. That hasn’t stopped opponents from charging that the mayor ultimately pushed for the order as part of an alleged quid pro quo between his lawyer and President Donald Trump to drop his federal corruption case. For weeks, Adams had hinted he planned to bring ICE back to Rikers Island after meeting with Trump border czar Tom Homan. The mayor has denied any connection between the dropping of his case and the executive order. Many City Council members disagree.

“The executive order, make no mistake about it, looks like it was brought about because of the relationship the mayor has with the Trump administration,” Speaker Adams said. The resolution itself refers to the executive order as “the poisonous fruit of Mayor Adams’ corrupt deal” with the president.

While the executive order says that the mayor’s administration will only allow ICE to pursue criminal enforcement investigations on Rikers Island for people who’ve been accused of serious crimes – not civil immigration enforcement – Speaker Adams said the Trump administration cannot be trusted to stick to this agreement. 

Mastro pushed back on this at a press conference earlier in the day Thursday, arguing that the correction department won’t honor any civil detainers. “The executive order that I executed after doing an independent assessment … was that there is a utility to corrections investigators working directly with federal law enforcement on criminal investigations,” Mastro said. “It is only for criminal enforcement and expressly excludes civil matters.”

Speaker Adams, who is also running for mayor, has no immediate plans to sue either Mayor Adams or the Trump administration, but the resolution’s passage gives her the authority to do so should a clear opportunity be identified. On Thursday, she said that the City Council is reviewing various legal avenues, including whether the executive order violates the city’s sanctuary laws, whether there’s a conflict of interest issue – aka the dismissal of the mayor’s case and how that came about – and whether Mastro was even authorized to sign the order in the first place. 

Several civil rights groups including the Legal Aid Society have also said they are considering suing over the executive order. 

“We’re at the very beginning of this,” Speaker Adams said.