New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday dismissed as “baseless” a City Council lawsuit requesting a temporary restraining order (TRO) and a preliminary injunction against Adams’ Executive Order 50 allowing Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to operate an office on Rikers Island Correctional Facility that would facilitate the deportation of Caribbean and other immigrants.
“The City Council appears to be spreading misinformation, so let’s be clear: To maintain the trust of the nearly 8.5 million New Yorkers our administration serves and protects every day — and to ensure there was never even the appearance of any conflict — Mayor Adams delegated all powers, responsibilities and decision-making related to any action authorizing federal officials to investigate crimes at Rikers Island to First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro,” Mayoral Spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus told Caribbean Life in a statement.
“The first deputy mayor conducted a thorough and independent assessment — which included multiple visits to Rikers Island, conversations with federal law enforcement and our own Department of Correction officers, and more — and he independently concluded that a federal presence at Rikers to conduct federal criminal investigations is in New York City’s best interest and protects public safety, particularly in our ongoing efforts to target violent transnational gangs now present in our city, including those designated as terrorist organizations,” she added.
“Cooperation with federal law enforcement — including the FBI, DEA, ATF, Homeland Security, and US Postal Inspectors — will be expressly limited to criminal law enforcement investigations, not civil matters. Executive Order 50 is expressly authorized by New York City’s local laws — the very laws enacted by the City Council,” Altus continued.
“While we will review the lawsuit, this one seems baseless and contrary to the public interest in protecting New Yorkers from violent criminals,” she said. “We remain committed to our administration’s efforts to reduce crime and keep New Yorkers safe — we hope the City Council will join us in doing so.”
In addition, Altus said, “The City Council apparently realizes this executive order, on its face, is consistent with local law. So, it engages in rank speculation and surmise, which is not a proper basis for any lawsuit.”
Adams’ Executive Order 50 was issued by First Deputy Mayor Mastro on April 8.
The City Council lawsuit contends that the executive order is “unlawful, tainted by the conflict of interest created by the corrupt bargain the mayor entered into – his personal freedom in exchange for an ICE office.
“The law is clear that the mayor is unable to cure that conflict of interest simply by delegating his authority to open an ICE office to Deputy Mayor Mastro,” it says.
In seeking an immediate halt of any associated activity, the lawsuit outlines how the “unlawful action” would undermine public safety in New York City by eroding trust between local government, including local law enforcement and New Yorkers.
It also argues that the mayor never delegated the specified duty to Mastro, as required by the City Charter.
“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,” said Speaker Adrienne Adams, a candidate for Mayor of the City of New York in June’s Democratic Primary. “Mayor Eric Adams clearly indicated his intention for this executive order when the Trump administration attempted to dismiss his corruption case in what prosecutors and Judge Ho saw as a quid pro quo.
“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 that he shamelessly previewed on the Fox News couch with Tom Homan,” she added. “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.
“This is a naked attempt by Eric Adams to fulfill his end of the bargain for special treatment he received from the Trump administration,” Speaker Adams continued. “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 City Council said that on the same day that Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) ordered Adams’ federal corruption case dismissed without prejudice, the mayor met with Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and expressed his intention to invite ICE onto Rikers via executive order.
“The political intervention in the corruption case led several top federal prosecutors to resign and assert the actions amounted to a quid pro quo,” it said.
The Council noted that Federal Judge Dale Ho, who declined to immediately dismiss the case and sought independent arguments, indicated that “Everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.”
The City Council said the executive order pertains to Local Law 58 of 2014 that prevents federal immigration authorities from maintaining an office on Rikers Island.
Last week, the Council passed Resolution 836, authorizing Speaker Adams to take legal action to defend against the mayoral administration’s violation of Sanctuary Laws and the Trump administration’s attacks on the City of New York.
The lawsuit says Executive Order 50 is “the poisoned fruit of Mayor Adams’ deal with the Trump administration: if the mayor cooperated with the administration’s immigration enforcement priorities, including by permitting ICE to operate on Rikers, the charges against him would be dismissed.”
It also says that “The mayor’s decision to have Mastro issue the EO (executive order) on April 8, 2025, does not magically cleanse the taint of conflict from the order.”
In addition, the lawsuit contends that “ICE has long been notorious for sweeping unintended targets into its enforcement activities, meaning that allowing ICE back onto Rikers for the purpose of criminal investigation purposes is only a short and slippery slope to civil immigration enforcement.
“In fact, ICE routinely arrests immigrants who simply happen to be in the vicinity of its intended target, despite lacking a warrant or even probable cause with respect to those ‘collateral’ arrestees,” it says. “And it continues to do so in violation of a federal court order that limited this practice in 2022 but which it has flagrantly disregarded.”
The mayor’s Executive Order 50 notes that Rikers Island is the site of correctional facilities under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections (DOC) and currently houses members and associates of designated terrorist organizations among other individuals incarcerated there.
It also states that “there is historical precedent for federal law enforcement authorities to have office space and personnel on Rikers Island as recently as a decade ago; and Sections 2(m) and 2(p) of Executive Order No. 49, signed March 24, 2025, delegates to the First Deputy Mayor the authority to perform any function, power or duty of the mayor in negotiating, executing and delivering any and all agreements, instruments and other documents necessary or desirable to effectuate any of the matters for any entity within the portfolio of the First Deputy Mayor or the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety, and to perform such other duties as the mayor may direct.”
Mastro said that, upon his appointment as First Deputy Mayor on April 1, 2025, Mayor Adams authorized him “to determine, based on my independent assessment, whether and under what circumstances to permit federal law enforcement authorities to have a presence on Rikers Island, and I have since conducted an independent review and made that assessment.”
He said Local Law 58 of 2014, as codified in the New York City Administrative Code at section 9-131, “allows federal immigration authorities to maintain office space on land over, which DOC has jurisdiction for purposes unrelated to the enforcement of civil immigration laws.”
Mayor Adams, therefore, authorized that federal law enforcement agencies, including but not limited to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security Investigations, and the US Postal Inspection Service, “designate personnel to maintain office space on land over which DOC has jurisdiction for the purpose of criminal enforcement and criminal investigations only.
“Such federal law enforcement personnel shall coordinate with CIB criminal investigations and related intelligence sharing focused on violent criminals and gangs, crimes committed at or facilitated by persons in DOC custody, and drug trafficking,” Adams added.
