New York City Mayor Adams Working to Bypass City Council on Sanctuary City Law

New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks during a news conference in New York City on April 5, 2024. Brittainy Newman/AP Photo

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he is working to bypass the New York City Council to change the city’s sanctuary city law ahead of a meeting with the incoming Trump administration’s border czar.

CBS News host Marcia Kramer asked Adams, a Democrat, about his pending meeting with President-elect Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, over illegal immigration in the city.

Adams stated that he wants criminal illegal aliens deported first, adding that he may try to bypass the City Council-passed sanctuary law, which in part bars the city’s police department from telling federal immigration officials about criminals’ immigration status.

“The City Council made it clear they don’t want to change that,” Adams told Kramer on Dec. 8, according to a transcript released by the mayor’s office. “They stated they’re not willing to change the sanctuary city law. I think they’re wrong. I have my teams looking at my power as executive orders.”

He then said that he has “to protect the people of this city” and suggested that he may have “the power to do so.”

“Prior to the election, even when I communicated to the president and his team, the current president, I stated over and over again we have to deal with the small number of violent offenders who are making their way into our country,” Adams said in the interview.

“In particular, it’s a very dangerous Venezuelan gang. It is not the overwhelming number of migrants and asylum seekers. And many of these gang members are preying on migrants and asylum seekers also.”

However, Adams said that because the City Council “made it clear” that it isn’t changing the sanctuary city law to allow cooperation with federal immigration officials, he is now going to “plan B” and looking at his options and powers as mayor.

“I told the corporation counsel, give me what are my options,” the mayor said in the Dec. 8 interview.

“As I stated almost a year ago, I want to look at those who are committing serious violent felonies in our city. And I want to know what are my powers.”

The mayor earlier this year said he wanted the city’s immigration law changed, and he reiterated his stance after Trump’s win in November. He had publicly supported the sanctuary city designation during his mayoral campaign, writing on social media platform Twitter (now X) in October 2021 that New York City would “remain a sanctuary city” if he won.

Homan and Adams are scheduled to meet in the coming days, the mayor said earlier this month.

“I want to hear the actual plan, and how are we going to operationalize the plan,” Adams told MSNBC on Dec. 5, reiterating that he wants to target illegal immigrants who have committed violent crimes in the city.

Homan, a former acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has issued multiple warnings to sanctuary cities ahead of Trump’s inauguration next month.

In November, Homan suggested that Denver Mayor Mike Johnston could face criminal charges following Johnston’s remarks to a local media outlet that he would direct police to block federal immigration officials from apprehending illegal aliens.

In multiple interviews, Homan has said that Trump wants to focus on deporting criminal illegal immigrants first but has also said that any unauthorized individual residing in the United States could face deportation.

Over the weekend, Trump told NBC News’s “Meet the Press” that he may deport families with mixed immigration statuses to avoid separating children from their parents and vowed that he will move to end birthright citizenship.