Mayor Eric Adams said in a television interview Sunday that he is exploring ways to go beyond the City Council to adjust the Big Apple's “sanctuary city” designation for immigration restrictions.
“The city council has made it clear they don't want to change that,” Adams said on CBS.The Point by Marcia Kramer.“They said they weren't going to change the Sanctuary City Act. I think they're wrong. I have my team monitoring my authority as an executive order.
“Do I have that power? I have to protect the people of this city,” he said. “That’s my North Star.”
The comments came days after city council members asked the mayor to take on the city's sanctuary status, a policy Adams had supported until recently getting stumped on the issue.
“Hard talk is all well and good, but actions speak louder,” Queens Councilman Robert Holden said Wednesday. “The Mayor had the opportunity to amend or repeal the Sanctuary City Act through the Charter Revision Commission, but chose not to. Now is the time to right these wrongs.”
As a first step, Mr. Holden called on the city to reopen the federal immigration center at Rikers Island, which was shut down in 2015 by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, and a day later, two top federal immigration officials in New York City expressed support for the idea.
A City Hall spokesperson countered that Adams would be breaking the law if he revoked the immigration designation, noting that the City Council has the authority to do so.
On Sunday, he told Kramer he wanted to find a way around that.
“I said to the corporate attorney, please tell me my options,” the mayor said. “I want to know my options. teeth. As I stated almost a year ago, I want to look at the people who are committing serious violent felonies in our city. And I want to know what my powers are.
“Now that the City Council has made it clear, we are not going to change the Sanctuary City Act to allow it.” [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] “This is to track down dangerous criminals,” Adams added. “Once they made that clear, I went to Plan B and said what are my options and what are my powers?”
Adams has long supported sanctuary designation, but has recently advocated loosening regulations to allow some leeway when it comes to immigrant criminals.
Sanctuary city jurisdictions have vowed not to cooperate with federal immigration authorities to detain immigrants until they can be picked up for deportation proceedings.
Adams sought exceptions in February and again last week for asylum seekers who broke the law and were detained by the NYPD in the five boroughs.
The city has spent more than $6 billion to house, feed and police migrants who have flooded into five boroughs since 2022, with the violent Venezuelan street gang Torren de Aragua funded by taxpayers. Building a foothold from the evacuation center.
