NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s border czar met with New York City Mayor Eric Adams Thursday as the Republican administration pushes for more help detaining and deporting people accused of crimes.
Adams didn’t address reporters following the closed-door talk with Thomas Homan at a federal office building in New York. Both men left the building in vehicles.
Besides discussing immigration, Adams had said before the meeting that he intended to bring up the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s move Wednesday to claw back more than $80 million it had previously paid the city to help defray the cost of sheltering homeless migrants.
U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement officials have long had a contentious relationship with New York, which has laws that limit police cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Adams says he favors loosening those “sanctuary” policies, but he doesn’t have the broad power to do so as mayor.
Still, the Democrat is under unique pressure to cooperate with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
On Monday, the Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors in Manhattan to dismiss corruption charges against Adams so he could focus on assisting the president’s immigration agenda.
As of Thursday, the criminal charges remained in place. If the case is ultimately dropped, a senior Justice Department official said in a memo that a review would be done after the mayoral election in November to assess whether it should be reinstated.
Immigration advocates say they’re concerned Adams might feel pushed to disregard or rescind some of the city’s current rules around cooperation with immigration enforcement, which come from a patchwork of state and city laws and mayoral executive orders.
Adams, who faces a Democratic primary in June, has said his priority is to ensure that people who commit serious crimes are removed from the city.
The law, however, restricts city officials from doing some things that U.S. immigration enforcement officials want most, like having city jails hold people wanted for civil immigration law violations past when they would ordinarily be released from custody.
The city also passed measures that curtail ICE’s access to public schools and other city properties.
Republican members of New York’s City Council who met separately with Homan prior to the meeting with the mayor said Homan hoped Adams will support efforts to roll back the city’s sanctuary protections.
“He’s expecting cooperation,” said Councilmember Bob Holden.
Adams has already ordered city officials to lawfully cooperate with Trump’s agenda around immigration and other issues, though the administration’s instructions have sparked worry and confusion among some city workers and contractors.
Adams had said he also intended to discuss restoring FEMA aid that had initially been paid to reimburse the city for the cost of housing homeless migrants at places including former hotels.
The Adams administration has leased several hotels and vacant buildings and repurposed them as migrant shelters as the city has tried to house some 230,000 people that have arrived from the U.S. southern border in recent years.
The Trump administration on Wednesday also filed a lawsuit against New York’s governor and attorney general over the state’s so-called Green Light law, versions of which have been enacted in a number of states and generally allow people who might not be in the U.S. legally to get driver’s licenses.
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Associated Press reporter Cedar Attanasio in New York contributed to this report.
