NYC mayor ordered to halt plan to have ICE in Rikers Island jail

A New York judge has ordered Mayor Eric Adams to temporarily halt a program to have immigration agents operate in the city’s infamous Rikers Island jail. 

Judge Mary Rosado has barred the city from “taking any steps toward negotiating, signing, or implementing any Memorandum of Understanding with the federal government” before an April 25 hearing in a lawsuit challenging the plan. 

NJ GOVERNOR ACCUSED OF HARBORING VIOLENT ILLEGAL CRIMINALS, DOJ LAUNCHES PROBE

The lawsuit against Adams came from the Democratic-controlled New York City Council, which seeks to bar Adams from cooperating with the Trump administration on combating illegal immigration. 

The suit focuses on Adams’ recent executive order that allows federal immigration authorities to operate an office on Rikers Island to help carry out criminal investigations into drug trafficking, organized violence and migrant gang activity plaguing the city.

In the suit, the city council accuses Adams of engaging in an illegal “quid pro quo” with the Trump administration by allowing ICE into the city prison in exchange for having the federal corruption charges against him dropped.

The suit claims that Adams, who is running for re-election as an independent, prioritized his own political goals over the city’s “prized sanctuary laws,” calling the executive order “the poisoned fruit of Mayor Adams’s deal with the Trump Administration.”

BORDER CROSSINGS HIT RECORD LOW IN MARCH THANKS TO ‘VIGILANT’ WORK OF AGENTS: REPORT

Fox News Digital has reached out to the mayor’s office. 

Adams previously announced he would deputize his first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, to handle all decision-making on the return of ICE to Rikers Island in order to “ensure there was never even the appearance of any conflict.”

Mastro said last week that discussions with the federal government over the plan were ongoing.

ICE previously had a presence at Rikers, but the agency was banned from the jail complex in 2014 under New York City’s sanctuary laws limiting cooperation with immigration enforcement.

Fox News Digital’s Peter Pinedo as well as The Associated Press contributed to this report.