Judge temporarily blocks ICE from opening office on Rikers

A Manhattan judge on Monday temporarily blocked the city from moving forward on an executive order that would allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents onto Rikers Island. AP file photo by Ted Shaffrey

By Jacob Kaye

For at least the next several days, federal immigration agents will not be allowed on Rikers Island, a Manhattan judge said Monday.

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration was temporarily barred by a judge this week from following through on an executive order issued earlier this month permitting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to conduct criminal investigations in the city’s jail complex.

The judge, Mary Rosado, issued the temporary restraining order on Monday in response to a lawsuit brought by the City Council last week in opposition to the controversial executive order, which was issued not by the mayor himself, but by his recently-appointed first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro.

Rosado’s order bans the city, including the mayor, his top deputy and the Department of Correction from “taking any steps towards negotiating, signing, or implementing” any agreement with the federal government about their presence on Rikers.

The order will remain in place until Friday, when lawyers for the City Council and the Adams administration argue their position in the case before the judge in Manhattan.

The City Council sued the mayor over the order about a week after it was issued by Mastro.

While lawmakers in the Council, including Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is running for mayor, initially claimed that the order violated the city’s sanctuary city laws, the suit filed last week made no such claim.

Instead, the suit accused 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 at the time of the suit’s filing. “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.”

Though Adams didn’t sign the order, he was the first to suggest it was in the works in February, almost immediately after federal prosecutors began attempting to dismiss the criminal indictment brought against the mayor in the fall.

Danielle Sassoon, the former acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who resigned in protest over the Department of Justice’s wish to dismiss the case, said in her resignation letter that Adams and the DOJ entered into a quid pro quo – in exchange for the case’s dismissal, the mayor would help President Donald Trump with is immigration enforcement in New York City.

Though the mayor has stringently denied such an agreement ever existed, Adams said he would issue the order allowing ICE on Rikers a day after the DOJ began pushing for the corruption case to be dropped.

Judge Dale E. Ho, who officially agreed to dismiss the charges at the start of April, said in his decision that the motion to dismiss the case from the DOJ “smack[ed] of a bargain.” The judge specifically cited Adams’ announcement regarding ICE’s presence on Rikers when accusing Adams and the federal government of entering into a quid pro quo.

Rather than issue the order himself, the mayor tapped Mastro to conduct an “independent assessment” and sign the order. Mastro issued the executive order a week after he took office.

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 strained 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.”

According to the order, the office on Rikers Island would be made available to a slew of federal agencies, including the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

The order marks a return to Rikers for ICE, which operated out of an office in the jails until 2014, the year the sanctuary city laws were passed by the City Council. The law, which was signed by former Mayor Bill de Blasio, explicitly banned ICE from operating within the jails or in any city facility.

The mayor’s executive order comes as the Trump administration has begun to send Venezuelan asylum seekers, many of whom they’ve claimed – without evidence – are gang members, to El Salvador under the guise of the Alien Enemies Act of 1789.

Mastro used a similar rationale when issuing the order.

“The executive order is carefully, narrowly tailored to address the specific issue of violence and gang violence by transnational groups who are designated terrorists,” Mastro said on April 10. “A lot of care has gone into making clear that that is the limit of the executive order consistent with local law.”