Updated: Jul. 09, 2024, 6:15 p.m. | Published: Jul. 09, 2024, 6:14 p.m.
By Paul Liotta | pliotta@siadvance.com
CITY HALL — Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that he supports a conservative-pushed rollback of sanctuary city policies passed during Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration.
He said he supported a bill pushed by the Common Sense Caucus — a bipartisan group of the City Council’s most conservative members, including Minority Leader Joseph Borelli (R-South Shore) and Councilman David Carr (R-Mid-Island/South Brooklyn) — that would repeal portions of the city Administrative Code precluding city agencies’ cooperation with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“I think the previous administration made a big mistake. I think we need to correct that aspect of it,” Adams said. “New Yorkers have a right to be safe in their city. The same way anyone breaks the law or does something violent to New Yorkers, I’m going to voice my concern about that.”
The mayor’s negative feelings about the prior administration have been no secret, and on Tuesday, he praised earlier mayors for their sanctuary city policies dating back to Mayor Ed Koch.
He first issued an executive order in 1989 limiting local cooperation with the federal government on matters of immigration. ICE didn’t exist until 2003 with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Subsequent mayors, including Mayor David Dinkins and Mayor Rudy Giuliani, issued similar executive orders. The general idea behind the policies is that immigrants will be more likely to cooperate with local law enforcement if they know they won’t be on the radar of immigration officials.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration passed the first local law on the issue explicitly limiting the Department of Correction’s cooperation with ICE.
The laws passed during de Blasio’s tenure are the ones targeted by the Common Sense Caucus, and took sanctuary city policies further.
In 2014, new laws removed an ICE office from Rikers Island and prohibited the Department of Correction, NYPD, and Department of Probation from honoring ICE detainer requests — official requests to detain individuals for possible deportation.
The law had a series of carveouts for when those departments could honor detainer requests — if an individual was convicted of a litany of violent or serious crimes, if they were on federal terror watch lists or if ICE obtained a judicial warrant.
Reports also mandated by those laws show the effect they’ve had on detainer requests from the federal government.
The NYPD received 2,635 such requests from Oct. 1, 2013 to Sept. 30, 2014, and just 109 from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023. The Department of Correction received 627 from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018 and 201 from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023. The Department of Probation keeps less robust records on its website, but listed no detainer requests from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/South Brooklyn) led a February press conference with members of the Common Sense Caucus and Kenneth Genalo, ICE director for the New York City field office.
“Unfortunately, a lot of the way that we have to do our intelligence in ICE is the same way that you find out about cases. It’s through the media,” Genalo said of the challenges his agency faces. “We’re no longer contacted. We’re no longer called.”
While Adams sought not to paint the city’s migrant population with the broad brush of criminality, Malliotakis on Tuesday pointed to a series of high-profile crimes connected to the community.
Specifically, an incident in which migrants were involved in an altercation with police officers in Times Square, and another in which a migrant is accused on raping a 13-year-old girl.
“It’s putting New Yorkers in danger, and it’s putting other migrants in the shelter in danger too,” she said Tuesday.
The congresswoman said she’d like to see Adams take more proactive steps, like issuing an executive order rolling back sanctuary city policies, and then fighting the lawsuit that would undoubtedly come.
For local members of the Common Sense Caucus, Borelli and Carr, they welcomed support of the city’s executive, but given the liberal makeup of the Council, it’s unclear if the bill will make it to Adams’ desk.
“The mayor is right and this has to be repealed,” Borelli said. “The only beneficiary of this law are criminals.”
Carr also urged the Charter Review Commission convened by Adams earlier this year to consider putting sanctuary city policies to a ballot proposal in the upcoming November elections.
“As a member of the Common Sense Caucus, I am proud to cosponsor legislation that would repeal de Blasio’s so-called Sanctuary City laws,” he said. “It is absurd to prohibit local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, especially when a person of interest is being released from Riker’s or local custody. I am glad that the mayor has recognized this need too, and I believe that he should urge his Charter Revision Commission to place the repeal of this dangerous legislation on the ballot.”
https://www.silive.com/news/2024/07/mayor-adams-calls-for-change-to-nyc-sanctuary-city-laws.html