President Trump’s administration is taking New York City to court over its sanctuary laws in the wake of a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent getting shot, allegedly by undocumented migrants with long rap sheets, earlier this week.
The gambit — an apparent effort to strike down the city’s sanctuary laws as unconstitutional — places Mayor Eric Adams in an awkward position, given his warm relationship with Trump and willingness to work with the president on his immigration crackdown. However, it’s not like City Hall and the White House have not already been engaged in legal battles, given that Adams’ administration filed one lawsuit against the Trump administration and is a party to five others.
In the suit, filed in the Eastern District of New York on July 24, Trump Justice Department officials argue that the city’s sanctuary laws are “designed to impede the Federal Government’s ability to enforce the federal immigration laws.” Therefore, the statutes violate the US Constitution’s Supremacy Clause because the federal government has “well-established, preeminent, and preemptive authority” to enforce the country’s immigration laws through its agencies.
In addition to the city itself, Mayor Eric Adams, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, Department of Correction Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch are also named as defendants in the suit.
“The Department of Justice is suing New York City and Mayor Eric Adams for continuing to obstruct law enforcement with sanctuary city policies,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post on X. “If New York’s leaders won’t step up to protect their citizens, we will.”
The suit came nearly a week after two undocumented migrants allegedly shot a CBP officer in the face and leg after attempting to rob him. Trump Justice Department attorneys claim that both men were arrested several times, and one was released under the city’s sanctuary laws after ICE tried to have him held on a transfer request.
“But for New York City’s sanctuary policies, this tragedy could have been avoided,” the suit reads.
The suit alleges that the city’s sanctuary laws, which significantly restrict cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration agents, “countless criminals being released” who “should have been held for immigration removal.” Under the city’s sanctuary laws, it can only honor federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement transfer requests, known as detainers, if the agency presents a signed judicial warrant and the migrant in question was convicted of one of roughly 170 violent crimes.
In addition, the laws barred ICE from operating within city jails and entering other city-run facilities without signed judicial warrants.
Adams’ spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus repeated the mayor’s frequent refrain that he agrees with the sanctuary laws’ “essence,” but feels they “go too far when it comes to dealing with those violent criminals on our streets.”
She said the mayor has “urged the Council to reexamine [the laws] to ensure we can effectively work with the federal government to make our city safer. So far, the Council has refused.”
“We will review the lawsuit,” she said.
City Council spokesperson Rendy Desamours, in a statement, said the council is also reviewing the suit. He argued that cities with sanctuary laws are proven to be safer than those without them.
“When residents feel comfortable reporting crime and cooperating with local law enforcement, we are all safer, something both Republican and Democratic mayors of New York City have recognized,” Desamours said. “It is the Trump Administration indiscriminately targeting people at civil court hearings, detaining high schoolers, and separating families that make our city and nation less safe.”
Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, called the suit “frivolous at best, and an attack on New York’s ability to govern itself at worst.”
“New York must reject Trump’s continued assaults to its Constitutional right to pass local laws that serve our communities best,” Awawdeh said in a statement. “Mayor Adams must fight back against this federal overreach and defend the well-being of all New Yorkers.”
