By Michael V. Cusenza
The Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court on Friday denied Mayor Eric Adams’ administration’s request to appeal the Temporary Restraining Order blocking the implementation of Executive Order 50, which would facilitate Immigration and Customs Enforcement reopening an ICE center on Rikers Island.
The City Council, which filed a lawsuit in April requesting a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction against Adams’ executive order, hailed the decision.
“Time and time again, the courts have rejected Mayor Adams’ attempt to hand power to the Trump Administration’s ICE over our city. The Appellate Division’s recent decision denying the mayor’s appeal of the Temporary Restraining Order on Executive 50 is another win for New Yorkers and their constitutional rights. The Council will continue fighting to protect New Yorkers from the Trump’s Administration agenda to separate families, disappear our neighbors, and harm our communities,” Rendy Desamours, a spokesperson for the council, wrote in a statement.
The lawsuit contends that the executive order is unlawful, tainted by the conflict of interest created by the corrupt bargain the mayor entered into—his personal freedom in exchange for an ICE office. The law is clear, the suit claims, that the mayor is unable to cure that conflict of interest by delegating his authority to open an ICE office to First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro.
In September, Adams was indicted in federal court, accused of taking bribes and soliciting illegal campaign contributions. The Justice Department in March suddenly dropped the charges. Earlier this month, a federal judge permanently dismissed the indictment.
On the same day that the DOJ ordered the Manhattan U.S. Attorney to drop the charges against Adams, the mayor met with President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and expressed his intention to invite ICE onto Rikers Island via executive order. The political intervention in the corruption case led several top federal prosecutors to resign and assert the actions amounted to a quid pro quo, the council noted. The Hon. Judge Dale Ho, who declined to immediately dismiss the case and sought independent arguments, indicated that “Everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.”
““Executive Order 50 is the poisoned fruit of Mayor Adams’s deal with the Trump Administration: if the Mayor cooperated with the administration’s immigration enforcement priorities, including by permitting ICE to operate on Rikers, the charges against him would be dismissed,” the council wrote in its petition to the court. “Although it purports to be the product of Mastro’s ‘independent assessment, whether and under what circumstances to permit federal law enforcement authorities to have a presence on Rikers Island,’ all available evidence confirms that the issuance of Executive Order 50 was the outcome demanded by the resolution of the Mayor’s criminal case, rather than the product of any ‘independent assessment’ by Mastro.”
Additionally, according to the suit, “Neither the Mayor nor Mastro claim that the Mayor was walled off from the decision-making process in any manner. To the contrary, when asked, the Mayor explicitly denied that he was ‘recused’ from the decision.”
