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Mayor Eric Adams is looking for ways to go over the City Council’s head to tweak the Big Apple’s restrictive migrant “sanctuary city” designation, he said during a TV interview Sunday.
“The City Council made it clear they don’t want to change that,” Adams said on CBS’s “The Point with Marcia Kramer.” “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.
“Do I have the power to do so? I have to protect the people of this city,” he said. “That is my north star.”
The comments come just days after a city lawmaker took the mayor to task over the city’s sanctuary status, something Adams has backed until his recent waffling on the issue.
“Tough talk is good but actions speak louder,” Queens Councilman Robert Holden said Wednesday. “The mayor had the chance to amend or repeal sanctuary city laws through his Charter Revision Commission but chose not to. Now, it’s time to right these wrongs.”
Holden called on the city to reopen a federal immigration office at Rikers Island that was shut down in 2015 by then Mayor Bill de Blasio as a first step — with a pair of New York City federal immigration bigwigs voicing support for the idea one day later.
A City Hall spokesperson countered that Adams would be breaking the law if he reversed the migrant designation, noting that it’s the council that has the authority to do so.
On Sunday, he told Kramer he wanted to figure out a way to get around that.
“I told the corporation counsel, give me what are my options,” the mayor said. “I want to know what my options are. 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.
“Once the city Council made it clear, we’re not changing the sanctuary city laws to allow [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to go after those dangerous offenders,” Adams added. “Once they made that clear, I went to plan B and said, what are my options and my powers.”
Adams has been a supporter of the sanctuary designation in the past but has recently pushed for a loosening of the restrictions to allow some leeway when it comes to migrant criminals.
Sanctuary city jurisdictions vow not to cooperate with federal immigration authorities to hold migrants in custody until they can be picked up for deportation proceedings.
In February and again last week Adams has called for exceptions for asylum seekers who break the law in the five boroughs and are detained by the NYPD.
The city has doled out more than $6 billion to house, feed and police the flood of migrants who have flooded into the five boroughs since 2022, with the violent Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua establishing a foothold out of the tax-funded shelters.