Mayor of New York City Eric Adams attacked the present city policies restricting such contact as harmful to the general public on Tuesday and urged for increased collaboration between the local police and federal immigration officials.
The mayor’s criticism of the so-called sanctuary laws, which New York has enacted over the past ten years in an attempt to safeguard its immigrant population, was at its harshest to date in her remarks. These rules restrict the ways in which local organizations can support federal detention and deportation activities.
Adams, a Democrat, stated that the city’s police force must be allowed to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers when someone is accused of a major felony, such burglary or gang activity, stating his “fundamental disagreement” with those regulations.
According to Adams, “ICE must remain in contact with us, and they might deport us if that’s their decision.”
The act of not being able to inform ICE that the individual in question has conducted 3 robberies and is a member of an established gang crew is concerning to him, he added.
The sanctuary rules implemented by New York have been the target of fierce criticism from republicans in current weeks due to a number of high-profile incidents including migrants, such as a gunshot in Times Square and a fight with police.
As a public security precaution to reassure the city’s sizable immigrant majority that they shouldn’t have to be scared to engage with local police, the city first started restricting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement officials in the 1980s.
Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani supported those practices at the time, claiming that it was crucial to reduce immigrants’ anxiety about the police in order to combat crime.