Eric Adams Cozies Up To Trump As He Plans Mass Deportations

NEW YORK — Donald Trump wants to deport millions of migrants. New York City’s Democratic mayor is in a position to help him — and has the incentive to do so.

Mayor Eric Adams — the enigmatic, indicted leader of the country’s largest sanctuary city — is meeting with the incoming “border czar” Thursday. He is vowing to uphold laws limiting NYPD cooperation with federal immigration agents, while seeking to alter those laws and saying they shield criminals. He plans to close a migrant shelter on federal land.

Through actions and words, Adams is cozying up to Trump — laying the groundwork, his critics say, for a presidential pardon.

“How do we secure our border? I want to share some of my strategies,” the mayor said in previewing his Thursday confab at City Hall with Trump border envoy Tom Homan. “We need a real decompression strategy. It’s important to go after those who are committing serious crimes, particularly those dangerous gangs that have come from Venezuela. And now we’re finding them on the streets of our country.”

This week, the centrist Adams revealed one way he can address the issue: using executive orders to bypass the left-leaning City Council and loosen sanctuary laws in part prohibiting the release of migrants into federal custody unless they’ve been recently convicted of serious crimes.

“Do I have the power to do so? I have to protect the people of this city,” he told CBS New York. “That is my North Star.”

Adams’ repeated statements about working with Trump are a departure from his predecessor, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, who fought in court during Trump’s first presidency to destroy municipal ID data that could lead federal authorities straight to undocumented immigrants. And it’s a stark contrast to Adams’ fellow Democratic leaders in Los Angeles, Denver and Boston who’ve taken a hard line against Trump’s campaign promise to remove millions of people living in the country illegally.

Since spring of 2022, about 225,000 migrants have come through New York City’s intake system, and about 55,000 currently live in municipal shelters. The mayor estimates the city has spent $6.4 billion providing shelter and services for them.

After Trump’s victory, Adams staked out common ground with the president-elect and won influential MAGA fans. His allies highlight a recent poll showing 51 percent of city voters support Trump’s efforts to deport undocumented immigrants.

Feds seeking to make an example of a sanctuary city could find a road map to that end in the multi-agency web the Adams administration has built to meet the immense demands imposed by the new arrivals. Migrants have been sheltered in hotels and tent complexes whose locations are publicized, and the city is the keeper of data detailing who’s staying where during their limited time in the city’s care.

Migrant advocates have feared federal raids on the shelters, though Adams on Tuesday announced the closures of 25 sites, including the Floyd Bennett Field complex on federal land in Brooklyn. That closure is planned just before Trump’s inauguration, but Adams’ team did not mention him in its announcement. Instead, it cited the decreasing number of new arrivals to the city.

Under sanctuary laws, the city’s shelters and data cannot be accessed legally without judicial warrants for the most part. But critics are concerned Adams may be just as unpredictable as Trump, and some pointed to loopholes to privacy protections.

“He’s going to be the enabler-in-chief for Trump's deportation efforts,” surveillance technology watchdog Albert Fox Cahn said. “We collect huge amounts of data in the process of delivering services to more than 8 million New Yorkers, and that data often contains identifying information that could be used by ICE.”

Additionally, New York City has loosely tracked migrants who’ve crossed the southern border and used its shelters and services, leaving paper trails with the departments of Homeless Services and Emergency Management, as well as the schools and municipal hospital systems. The city government does not, however, keep information on where migrants end up after they leave city shelters.

And just as newcomers had to submit personal documents when they applied for IDNYC — a program launched in 2015 in part so undocumented immigrants could have a government ID — they’re also expected to turn over sensitive information at the city’s legal assistance and asylum application help centers.

Legal groups, including the New York Civil Liberties Union, also caution that contractors hired by the city to provide migrant services could be a point of vulnerability if they’re not familiar with sanctuary city laws.

New York City’s sanctuary policies have been in place since 1989 under Mayor Ed Koch, but the laws were beefed up under de Blasio between 2014 and 2018. And the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's own policies prohibit its officers from “protected areas” including schools and hospitals. Migrant advocates believe that list includes shelters.

Adams has said he wants the city to be able to turn over migrants who commit violent crimes, so the feds can handle the criminal justice process. But the mayor has so far declined to differentiate between those charged and those convicted — and even claimed incorrectly that non-citizens do not have due process rights under the Constitution. Currently, the NYPD and the Department of Correction cannot honor ICE detainer requests without a judicial warrant or a conviction on one of more than 170 serious crimes in the past five years.

Those who disagree with Adams’ criticism of sanctuary city laws said they’ve found some reassurance in the mayor’s deputies, who they believe will seek to counter his rhetoric. They credit them for under-the-radar preparations, including plans to cease separating the city’s traditional shelter system from the migrant system and remove the National Guard from shelters. Those moves would make congregations of migrants more difficult to find.

Former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who runs a homeless shelter network, said the Adams administration officials working on this issue “are prepared.”

“They’re doing the work as opposed to doing the politics,” she said.

This week, Homan, the incoming border czar, commended Adams for his willingness to work with the Trump administration, telling Chicago’s mayor and Illinois’ governor to follow their fellow Democrat’s example.

“President Trump was given a mandate by the American people to stop the invasion of illegal immigrants, secure the border, and deport dangerous criminals and terrorists that make our communities less safe,” Karoline Leavitt, spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition, said. “He will deliver.”

Publicly, Adams and his top aides are declining to say what exactly that work will entail. They also won’t describe the extent of their migrant data and how or whether they’ll protect the information or the shelter sites.

“We did several scenario plannings,” the mayor told reporters recently. “I don’t want to speculate on what the next steps are.”

Adams critics, from GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis to the NYCLU, are accusing him of sending mixed messages on mass deportations. His allies say he has always been consistent on immigration.

“The far-left and the far-right are saying that why? They don’t like that he’s saying the common-sense, moderate thing,” said a person close to the mayor. “They want him to say the extreme thing.”

Democratic Rep. Nydia Velázquez said in an interview she expects Trump could target New York City just for the “visuals.”

She said of the president-elect, “We cannot underestimate the ability or the impulse from this administration that has no respect for the law to try to gather as much information as possible in terms of those who are undocumented.”

She chose her words more carefully when asked about Adams helping Trump.

“New York has its laws,” Velázquez said. “And the mayor has to act accordingly.”