Mayor Eric Adams has proclaimed himself to be New York’s nightlife mayor, its vegan mayor, its anti-rat mayor and anti-crime crusader mayor. He was filled with swagger, bluster and high self-regard as he faced multiple crises in the past three years.
Most recently, Adams chose to publicly kowtow to President Donald Trump, making a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago and attending his inauguration. In doing so, the mayor has inexplicably backed himself and New York City into a corner – both politically and morally – on mass deportations.
Adams said he agreed to not publicly “criticize” Trump in exchange for a “direct line” to the president, who has pledged to halt the flow of refugees, end birthright citizenship and surge Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to round up immigrants in homes, workplaces, schools, churches and hospitals.
Mass deportation of an estimated 11 million U.S. undocumented people would be a catastrophe. The New York economy depends on immigrants. There are 4.5 million in New York state, including 1.8 million who are noncitizens, and among those, an estimated 670,000 who are undocumented, according to a new study by the Fiscal Policy Institute and the Immigration Research Initiative.
Governor Kathy Hochul must take up the megaphone on this issue. In 2022, undocumented people paid an estimated $3.1 billion in state and local taxes. Tens of thousands of undocumented people are critical to restaurants, child and personal care, hotels, construction and farm operations.
The mayor is currently awaiting trial on charges of bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy and soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals. He has said he has not discussed a presidential pardon with Trump. Even so, his behavior has raised eyebrows among critics, supporters and his opponents in this year’s Democratic primary for mayor.
Let’s give the mayor the benefit of the doubt and take him at his word that he is not courting a Trump quid pro quo of his criminal case. Still, his posture toward Trump is a huge mistake. It runs counter to what you would expect from the mayor of the nation’s largest city, where immigrants are an essential part of our heritage, vibrancy and everyday life.
As fear and tensions run high, Adams is voluntarily gagged – consigned to silence – and has even pledged New York City police would coordinate with ICE. It is unclear how that will work with New York’s Sanctuary City limitations on cooperation with ICE.
To sum up, it means the mayor cannot answer Trump’s attacks on New York and speak up for vulnerable immigrants essential to our city. We are, in fact, a city of hard-working immigrants, not evil foreign invaders responsible for every societal ill. The muzzled mayor’s office cannot declare the obvious: Trump is hapless, callous and simple-minded, and his rhetoric is over the top.
One would hope Adams would see himself and the mayor’s office as a national leader of the resistance to mass deportations. New York mayors traditionally use their platforms to speak out against injustices and protect the vulnerable. If ICE is allowed to run roughshod over New York City, no urban area in America is safe from the Trump assault.
The U.S. recorded a record-breaking, foreign-born population of 47.3 million in 2023, meaning immigrants account for 14.3 percent of the population, according to the Pew Research Center. As of 2022, 77 percent of the immigrants in this country were here legally, with 49 percent becoming naturalized citizens, Pew data says.
The migrant crisis was fomented over the past two years by busloads of migrants mostly from Texas, Florida and Arizona. Single-handily, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott bused an estimated 57,000 migrants to New York City, resulting in homeless shelters, schools and food kitchens bursting at the seams.
And make no mistake, Trump’s mass deportation campaign is driven by racism. It attacks birthright citizenship enshrined in the 14th Amendment, which was intended to correct the moral wrongs of slavery. His attempt to reinterpret it disproportionately targets Latinx, Haitian, African and other immigrants of color in U.S. society.
What will the mayor be allowed to say as the Trump administration prepares to make its next move: the biggest assault on America’s safety net in at least three decades? New York, which depends on federal programs for the poor to make ends meet, stands to be devastated.
To pay for huge tax cuts for the rich, Trump and Congress must cut spending. So, there are calls for wholesale reductions in food stamps, Medicaid and housing assistance, as well as rolling back subsidies that make purchase of Affordable Care Act coverage within reach of the working class.
Unfortunately, Mayor Adams appears to have agreed to stand by quietly, indulge Trump’s vanity, and thereby set the stage for immigrants in our city – including those without criminal histories — to come under the malicious grip of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant assault. The chaos, fear and pain that ensues will be on his watch.
David R. Jones, Esq., is President and CEO of the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), the leading voice on behalf of low-income New Yorkers for more than 175 years. The views expressed in this column are solely those of the writer. The Urban Agenda is available on CSS’s website: www.cssny.org.