Mayor Eric Adams last week suggested that it was time to reverse New York City’s decades-long sanctuary city policy of refusing to cooperate with federal immigration officials so criminal illegals could be deported, NBC News reported.
In a press conference on February 27, Mayor Adams told reporters that the city could not allow migrants who had been “identified as dangerous” to “hide under the law.” He noted that under current city policy, there was nothing the city could do about criminal illegals since “you cannot tell ICE.”
New York’s sanctuary city policy has come under intense criticism following several high-profile incidents involving illegals, including a recent shooting in Times Square and a massive brawl with NYPD.
The arrest of Venezuelan illegal Jose Antonio Ibarra for the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley also drew attention to New York’s sanctuary city policy after ICE confirmed that the 26-year-old Ibarra had been arrested in New York last September but released from custody before ICE could issue a detainer against him.
Adams’s remarks were an about-face from his previous support for the policy which first began in 1989 when then-Mayor Ed Koch issued an order blocking city officials from sharing information about illegal aliens with federal immigration officials.
Immigrant rights advocate Marlene Galaz told NBC News that Mayor Adams’s comments were “fanning the flames of hate.” She claimed that the city’s sanctuary policies make New York safer since illegals aren’t afraid to report crimes out of fear that they might be deported.
To change the city’s sanctuary policy to allow police to cooperate with ICE would require a vote by the New York City Council. However, the city council said last week that it did not plan to “revisit these laws.”
Mayor Adams told reporters that if it were up to him, he would permit local law enforcement to work with ICE to deport suspected criminal illegals without due process, arguing that the illegals did not provide due process to those “they shot or punched or killed.”
