Council sues mayor over plan to bring ICE to Rikers
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City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams led a Council lawsuit against Mayor Eric Adams this week for his plan to bring ICE back to Rikers Island. File photo by Emil Cohen/NYC Council Media Unit
By Jacob Kaye
The City Council on Tuesday sued Mayor Eric Adams and his administration over their plan to allow federal immigration agents onto Rikers Island.
The suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, alleges that Adams struck a “corrupt bargain” with President Donald Trump and his administration in issuing the executive order in exchange for the dismissal of Adam’s criminal case.
Though the mayor has denied the existence of such a quid pro quo, the Council called the order to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials into the city’s jails “the poisoned fruit of Mayor Adams's deal with the Trump administration.”
The suit comes less than a week after the Council overwhelmingly approved a resolution allowing Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is currently running for mayor, to take legal action against the administration over the executive order. It also marks the third time the Council has sued the mayor in the little over three years he’s been in office.
While high-ranking officials in the Council claimed at the time of the executive order’s passage that it was likely a violation of the city’s sanctuary city laws, the lawsuit makes no such claim. Instead, it accuses the mayor of violating the city’s charter by “using his ‘position as a public servant’ to obtain…‘private or personal advantage.’"
“Once again, this City Council is standing firm to protect the rights and safety of all New Yorkers against attacks by the Trump administration — because the city’s mayor won’t stop placing his own personal interests ahead of the people of our city,” Speaker Adams said in a statement. “The mayor has compromised our city’s sovereignty and is now threatening the safety of all New Yorkers, which is why we are filing this lawsuit to halt his illegal order.”
“When New Yorkers are afraid of cooperating with our city’s own police and discouraged from reporting crime and seeking help, it makes everyone in our city less safe,” the speaker added. “This is a naked attempt by Eric Adams to fulfill his end of the bargain for special treatment he received from the Trump administration. New York cannot afford its mayor colluding with the Trump administration to violate the law, and this lawsuit looks to the court to uphold the basic standard of democracy, even if our mayor won’t.”
The Adams administration did not respond to request for comment on Tuesday.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday was largely expected. The Council has cried foul over the plan to bring ICE to Rikers since it was first floated by Adams in February.
In early February, federal prosecutors led by then-acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove began moving to dismiss the corruption case the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York brought against Adams last fall.
But Bove ran into some difficulties. Danielle Sassoon, who had assumed the top position in the SDNY office after Trump appointed her to serve as the acting-U.S. attorney, refused to drop the charges against Adams on Bove’s behalf. In a letter to Bove, Sassoon accused Adams of striking a deal with the DOJ, promising to help enact Trump’s immigration enforcement in New York City in exchange for the dismissal of the case.
A day later, Adams met with Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, and announced that he would soon issue an executive order opening the door of ICE to return to Rikers Island – the agency operated on the island until 2014, when the city passed its sanctuary city laws banning the agency from operating within the jail complex.
However, weeks passed without Adams’ issuance of the order.
But the perception that the mayor had struck a deal with the Trump administration remained. When officially dismissing the case at the beginning of April, federal Judge Dale Ho said the deal “smack[ed] of a bargain,” and specifically cited Adams’ announcement regarding ICE’s presence on Rikers.
Rather than issue the order himself, Adams tapped his recently appointed first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, to conduct an “independent assessment” and sign the order.
The Council said in their suit that the idea that Mastro conducted his assessment and issued the order within a week of taking the job strains credulity.
“A reasoned policy analysis of this complex issue, involving interplay between city and federal law, could not have been completed in a week,” the suit read. “The logical inference is that because the decision was predetermined, Mastro felt no need to engage in a meaningful ‘independent assessment’ during the one week between his appointment (April 1, 2025) and his ‘decision’ on April 8, 2025.”
City Councilmember Alexa Avilés, who chairs the Committee on Immigration, called the order “political blackmail.”
“Turning Rikers into an outpost for the Trump administration’s extreme agenda has nothing to do with protecting New Yorkers and everything to do with the mayor protecting himself,” she said. “Selling out our city’s diverse immigrant communities that built this city to Trump will make every New Yorker less safe. The Council is taking this fight to court to defend our city when the mayor won’t and calling this what it is: a disgraceful and blatant quid pro quo.”
It’s not the first time the Council has sued Adams over his management of Rikers Island.
Last year, the Council accused the mayor of breaking the law by refusing to implement their bill banning solitary confinement in the city’s jails.
The lawsuit is ongoing.
