In his weekly press conference today, New York City Mayor Eric Adams took a firm stance against undocumented migrants and expressed openness to work with the incoming Trump administration on deportations. His comments come after Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, appeared on Fox News the day before and said he was willing to meet with “anybody,” including the mayor, to work out a deportation plan. “Prioritization out of the gate is public safety threats,” Homan continued, “It keeps the community safe. Let’s work together and get this done.” Homan was director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the president-elect in his first term and implemented Trump’s “zero-tolerance” child separation policy.
Adams said that his administration is putting together a series of “scenario plannings” regarding what will be done with migrant shelters in the city that are on federal land, and at various points he stated that he was “willing to sit down with the border czar” and discuss plans. The mayor said that no meeting was planned as of yet but that their “teams will coordinate.” The “zero-tolerance” policy implemented by Tom Homan in Trump’s first term separated 1,995 children from their parents crossing the border in just a couple of months, although the figure is widely acknowledged to be much higher, as it does not include children separated from parents who sought asylum at legal ports of entry. Speaking at CPAC last year, Homan said “I’m sick and tired of hearing about the family separation […] I’m still being sued over that… I don’t give a s**t, right? Bottom line is, we enforced the law.” It would later be revealed that ICE blocked efforts from other government agencies to reunify parents with their children.
Adams specified that he did not want to take issue with undocumented immigrants who are law-abiding, saying that “those people should not be rounded up in the middle of the night,” and that the policy should be oriented towards criminals. “Those who are here committing crimes, robberies, shooting at police officers, raping innocent people, have been a harm to our country… I want to sit down and hear the plan for how we’re going to address them.” Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Stephen Miller, does not appear to share the same concerns, telling a conservative podcaster earlier this year: “when Donald Trump goes back to the White House, as God is my witness, you are going to see millions of people rapidly removed from this country who have no right to be here.”
Asked whether Adams himself met the definition of “criminal,” – since he appeared to be using the term for people who have been charged but not convicted, and is facing federal corruption charges – the mayor resorted to an inaccurate reading of the Constitution, in an effort to separate himself from the category he may have inadvertently thrown himself into. “The Constitution is for Americans,” the mayor said. “What rights I have, the person that decides to shoot a police officer, they should not have those rights.” While the rights of immigrants are often overlooked in immigration proceedings, the Fifth Amendment (like most language in the Constitution) speaks of “person[s]” having the right to “due process of law,” not citizens, and Supreme Court precedent enshrines access of immigrants to those rights as such.
