Undocumented migrants living in New York City are now more vulnerable than ever to be deported under sweeping raids that President-elect Donald Trump is determined to order once he takes office on January 20. Mayor Eric Adams announced on Tuesday that he will meet with Trump and work with his administration to facilitate deportation by denying migrants in New York City the right to due process under the U.S. Constitution.
The announcement came during Adams’ weekly press conference at City Hall and reverberated throughout the region like a thunderbolt. If New York City stops being the safe haven that it has been since 2014, many other areas in the metropolitan region will feel the chilling effects of New York City caving to the pressures of ICE agents.
“The Constitution is for Americans”, said Adams during his press conference. “I’m not a person that snuck into the country. My ancestors have been here for a long time.”
Wrong, Mr. Adams: the Constitution is not for American citizens only, its principles apply to everyone while in the United States. Adams should know, since his ancestors were African slaves who were denied any Constitutional protection until 1868. It was in that year that they were granted citizenship, and legal personhood, thanks to the 14th Amendment.
Several immigration advocates quickly pushed back on the Mayor’s statement. “Mayor Adam is ripping a page from Trump’s playbook, stoking fear and spreading misinformation,” said the president of the New York Immigration Coalition in a statement. “We should be able to expect that the mayor of New York City has a basic understanding of the Constitution rights of the people he serves.”
During the press conference Adams made it clear that he intends to limit the rules that make New York City a “sanctuary city”, effectively opening the doors to federal immigration agents to obtain the cooperation of the local police.
The announcement is chilling. As I report the news, I am thinking of the many Latino students that my organization serves. I even feel unsafe naming it. I will just say that I am on the Board of an organization that provides English as a Second Language to adults whose primary language is Spanish. It is not our role to inquire whether they are in this country documented or undocumented. Our role is simply to help them better communicate in the official language of the United States.
For me, “migrants” is not a collective concept that refers to anonymous individuals. I associate names, faces and personal stories with migrants living in the New York metropolitan area. They are hardworking men and women who came to this country running away from poverty, violence, and drug cartels. Here they became productive residents employed for the most part in restaurants, construction, landscaping and house cleaning. They are grateful to be in the U.S., but given the choice of economic security they would be perfectly happy to stay in their country of origin. They come from a dozen countries or more in Central and South America, mainly Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador. But also El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Many more are from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. They ran here because they had no choice at home. And now because of Trump’s policies they will have to run again.
But this is not about Trump. We know the campaign promises he made to his electoral base and we are waiting to see how he intends to conduct the mass deportation of approximately 11 million undocumented migrants. This is about Eric Adams, a Democratic mayor who is supposed to know better than cooperate with an elected president with radical views on immigration.
“We should be able to address and coordinate with any entity when we are dealing with those who commit crimes in our city,” said Adams during his press conference. That is where the Mayor is trying to make a distinction. If a migrant committed a crime then the law enforcement men and women who operate in New York City should be open to cooperation with ICE agents. The problem is that cooperation in one area means making every undocumented migrant vulnerable and scared. The result will not be that they will voluntarily deport themselves. The immediate consequence will be that most of them will go underground and live in perpetual fear, thus undermining the basic rules of organized coexistence. They will stop paying taxes; they will no longer obtain drivers’ licenses to drive safely; they will skip auto insurance. They will close bank accounts and deal in cash transactions. In other words, they will stay, but they will skip essential steps that make living safer for everyone.
Again, today I am focusing on the merit or lack of merit of Trump’s mass deportation threats. I am focusing on Adams who is betraying his city as a safe haven for migrants. So much so that he reached out to Tom Homan, the man that Trump has identified as his next “border czar”, someone who believes that the military should be deployed to assist in mass deportation operations.
Is this Adams’ way to secure the support from the Trump administration in light of his own legal troubles? It is not for me to make assumptions. But it definitely sounds fishy when the Democratic Mayor of a Democratic city aligns himself with a Republican president with radical views. Maybe he is playing politics, but in the end we should hope that it will be the rule of law to decide the outcome of the Mayor’s stand.
Do undocumented migrants have the right to due process under the U.S. Constitution? If someone is accused of wrongful doing on U.S. soil do they have the right to be tried in front of a court of law before being deported for a crime that he may or may not have committed?
