For years, a handful of federal immigration agents worked out of a trailer office at the jail complex on Rikers Island in New York City. Their sole mission: to identify detainees who were undocumented so that they could be transferred to federal custody and deported.
The practice, at times contentious, turned Rikers into a deportation pipeline for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, leading to the expulsion of thousands of undocumented immigrants, including many who were never convicted or had only minor violations.
The city barred ICE from Rikers after passing sanctuary laws in 2014 that limited the city’s cooperation with the federal government and all but sealed the pipeline. But after a 10-year hiatus, ICE will soon reestablish a presence at the city’s largest jail after the administration of Mayor Eric Adams issued an executive order on Tuesday restoring its access.
The mayor said that, this time around, ICE and other federal agencies will have a more limited presence at Rikers, with the agency’s work restricted to criminal investigations, such as tackling transnational gangs.
Those assurances did little to tamp down concerns from civil rights groups and immigration lawyers. They said that the move violated the spirit of the city’s sanctuary laws and could give ICE a foothold to re-establish its deportation pipeline at Rikers.
Even former top ICE officials warned that the executive order could still help the president’s broader deportation efforts, even if it was narrowly crafted to prevent the city from helping President Trump enforce federal immigration laws, many of which are civil, not criminal matters.
“I think this gives ICE a lot of what it wants,” said John Sandweg, who served as an acting director of ICE under President Obama. “Even though this is essentially limited to criminal investigations, this will significantly bolster ICE’s capacity to do regular immigration enforcement on Rikers Island.”
What will ICE do at Rikers?
The executive order allows not just ICE but also at least six other federal agencies to open offices at city jails. That includes the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
The order acknowledges that members and associates of transnational gangs that the Trump administration has designated as foreign terrorist organizations, such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, are incarcerated at Rikers. The new partnership, the executive order says, would allow the federal government and the Department of Correction’s intelligence bureau to coordinate investigations and share information.
The partnership would be “focused on violent criminals and gangs, crimes committed at or facilitated by persons in D.O.C. custody, and drug trafficking,” the order says, adding that “activities will be limited to purposes unrelated to the enforcement of civil immigration laws.”
The order, which Mr. Adams had hinted at for weeks after meeting with Thomas D. Homan, the president’s border czar, came amid criticism that the mayor was helping the Trump administration gain access to Rikers as part of a deal to have federal corruption charges against the mayor dropped.
In a brief interview, Randy Mastro, the first deputy mayor who issued the order, said that the city would be allowed to help federal law enforcement officials gather information about the gangs from inside Rikers to bring criminal charges against them. Mr. Mastro, a former federal prosecutor, likened the strategy to how prosecutors took down the Mafia in the 1980s.
“They’re on the terrorist list for a reason, because they are plaguing public safety,” he said, “and they’re here, and we’re bringing all the resources to bear — all the cooperation that’s necessary to go after these transnational criminal organizations and violent criminals.”
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said it welcomed the return to Rikers.
“This partnership marks a strong step toward reversing the dangerous consequences of sanctuary city policies that have allowed violent offenders to roam free and terrorize New York communities,” the federal agency said.
What concerns have been raised?
Civil rights lawyers, immigration activists and local Democratic officials denounced the move, arguing that giving ICE access to Rikers could pave the way for the agency to operate inside the jail with little oversight or transparency.
Some worried that it could lead to informal channels of communication between federal agents and jail officials that could help ICE pick up undocumented immigrants who are not tied to criminal investigations.
“ICE is notorious for sweeping up anybody in their path, wherever they are, whether they have a reason or a basis to go after them,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “And so we know that the physical presence at Rikers will facilitate and foster all sorts of communications that may or may not be formal.”
Peter L. Markowitz, an immigration law professor at the Cardozo School of Law who helped draft the city’s sanctuary laws, called the executive order a “Trojan horse” meant to circumvent the sanctuary laws.
“My overall take is that the mayor’s claim that this effort to put ICE back on Rikers is about public safety and criminal law enforcement is just not a candid presentation of what’s really going on here,” he said.
Could this help Trump deport more people?
When the city barred ICE from Rikers in 2014, it imposed a measure that largely prohibited the city from turning over people in local custody to the immigration agency. Under that law, the city can transfer inmates to ICE custody only if they are convicted of one of about 170 serious crimes and if ICE presents a warrant signed by a judge, which is hard to obtain.
The city law, which ICE strongly opposed, had a seismic effect.
The last year ICE had a presence on Rikers, between October 2013 and September 2014, the Correction Department transferred 2,061 detainees to federal immigration authorities, according to a City Council report.
A decade later, from July 2023 through June 2024, the agency transferred only 15, according to a Correction Department report. Each had been convicted of a violent or serious crime, or was identified as possibly connected to another person in the national terrorist screening database — among the criteria that permit jail officials to comply with ICE, the report said.
Those limitations are still in place, even with the executive order issued this week. But some immigration experts said that giving ICE access to Rikers could still help the agency detain people after they are released, even without formal cooperation from the city.
Mr. Sandweg, the acting ICE director between August 2013 and February 2014, said that the new office could give ICE agents a tool they prize: the ability to interview inmates to determine whether they entered the country illegally and are therefore targets for deportation.
“There’s just an endless stream of federal crimes that you could ostensibly be investigating, but during that investigation you’re asking all the questions that are also going to inform whether or not you know you can place the person in the removal proceedings,” he said.
By embedding at Rikers, ICE could theoretically learn the release date of someone the agency is interested in, and could wait outside to make an arrest immediately after the person is released, he said.
Mr. Mastro, the deputy mayor, dismissed those concerns as hypothetical.
“That’s not the reality of the executive order, which is narrowly tailored to criminal investigations and criminal prosecutions at the federal level,” he said. “There’s nothing about this order that affects civil matters at all.”
Does this violate the city’s sanctuary laws?
The sanctuary laws limit cooperation between federal immigration officials and local law enforcement, including by barring ICE from Rikers.
But the legislation offers a caveat: “The mayor may, by executive order, authorize federal immigration authorities to maintain an office or quarters on such land for purposes unrelated to the enforcement of civil immigration laws.”
The City Council is examining whether the executive order issued on Tuesday violates that provision.
The order “to re-establish the ability for ICE agents to operate on Rikers Island for criminal enforcement is deeply concerning,” Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the City Council, said in a statement on X.
Ms. Adams, who is running for mayor against Mr. Adams (to whom she is not related), added, “It’s hard not to see this action as connected to the dismissal of the mayor’s case and his willingness to cooperate with Trump’s extreme deportation agenda.”
On Wednesday night, at least 30 City Council members and other top city officials signed a letter to Mr. Adams asking him to rescind the order, calling it “an egregious circumvention of the law driven by self-interest.”
What happened the last time ICE was on Rikers?
Scott Mechkowski, who worked at ICE for 25 years, including as deputy director of the New York City field office, said that Rikers Island played a significant role in the agency’s immigration enforcement efforts in the city.
He said that transferring people directly from Rikers into federal custody minimized risk to ICE officers and the public by avoiding potentially dangerous encounters on the streets.
“We had a dedicated team responsible for identifying individuals of foreign origin who were in clear violation of the law,” Mr. Mechkowski said.
ICE began to have a strong presence on Rikers after Sept. 11, 2001, when city officials were concerned that terrorist groups with ties to the Middle East could gain a foothold in the jails, said Martin Horn, an emeritus professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who served as correction commissioner from 2003 to 2009.
Mr. Horn said he had welcomed a collaboration between the Correction Department and federal law enforcement agencies, which he said provided vital intelligence on gangs and helped keep the jails safe.
But, toward the end of his tenure, he learned from immigration lawyers that ICE officials on the island would frequently instruct correction officers to pull a person out of a cell or housing area for an interview. Mr. Horn said inmates would rarely be told who wanted to speak with them or that they had a right not to participate in the conversation and to have a lawyer present. And ICE officials often misrepresented themselves when meeting with detainees, he said.
Current jail leaders, he said, must guard against such practices.
The Correction Department is responsible for detainees’ “protection and their detention, and that means a concern for evenhanded treatments,” Mr. Horn said. “The city has an obligation to ensure that inmates known their rights, and that those rights are respected.”
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