City Hall has to be careful in allowing the return of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to Riker Island, as local law forbids city cooperation with civil immigration authorities.
It’s been more than a decade since ICE was kicked off of Rikers after the City Council passed and then-Mayor Bill de Blasio barring the feds. Now, ICE is set to return under an agreement inked this week by First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro. Mastro was empowered to make the call after Mayor Adams — who had his charges dropped by federal prosecutors, who wanted his cooperation on immigration enforcement — recused himself.
The agreement tries to get around the law by asserting that ICE’s presence will only be to coordinate on criminal investigations, including those of transnational gangs.
One problem with this: we have, in the past few weeks, seen what passes for evidence of gang affiliation in ICE’s eyes. The agency has now sent dozens of migrants to the notorious CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador on evidence of membership in the Tren de Aragua gang that seems to amount to little more than common tattoos that the detainees had. We’d venture to say that even a lot of ICE and corrections officers themselves have tattoos of things like roses and crowns; does that make them members of TdA or MS-13? Of course not.
In a legal filing in its ongoing efforts to keep renditioning people to El Salvador under the flimsy invocation of an 1798 wartime law, the Trump administration has also laid out additional points of evidence that can be used to tag people as gang members, including things like texting any other supposed members, being in social media posts with other members or engaging in “financial transactions” with known members.
By that logic, getting dinner with an acquaintance and then sending them $40 for your food and drinks can get you tagged a criminal — and effective terrorist under Trump’s announcement that these gangs are now considered foreign terrorist groups — if that person happens to be themselves considered a gang member. ICE can find an angle to claim a criminal investigation about practically anyone they want to get around the city’s sanctuary policies.
Beyond the practicalities of ICE’s presence, we can’t forget about the messaging issues here. The enormous uncertainty around the administration’s heavy-handed immigration crackdown has even longtime legal residents on edge. Any cooperation at all between the city and ICE is going to add to that concern, which in turn is going to mean a huge chunk of the population in a city that’s almost 40% foreign-born might have some more reticence about reporting crimes or otherwise engaging with law enforcement, which is not good for anyone.
And what exactly do we get from all this? We can’t imagine that the city will be made any safer. For those who might say that we want to contend with people who have legitimately committed serious crimes and are part of these transnational criminal organizations, that’s exactly what our criminal justice system is already for.
Instead of getting chummy with ICE, an agency that’s been the vanguard of Trump’s authoritarian power grab, city officials should be trying to make Rikers a safer and more humane place as they face the prospect of receivership after years of unconstitutionally dangerous conditions.
