Irina Park
New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s administration has recently circulated a memo among city employees to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across city property—including shelters, schools, and hospitals. While the memo states that city employees should ask for a warrant and call a city lawyer for support, it also stipulates that if they feel “threatened” by ICE agents, they should comply with the agents’ requests. The memo also warns that harboring an undocumented immigrant is a federal crime.
So-called sanctuary cities—a false liberal solution that promotes inaction rather than resistance to federal immigration raids and does nothing to prevent them—provide a deceptive appearance of security and progress that Democrats traffic in to get elected. Despite New York City supposedly being the largest “sanctuary city”, Adams has stated that his office will facilitate Trump’s mass arrest and deportation plans in exchange for a pardon for his federal corruption and bribery indictment. Following a meeting with Thomas Homan, Trump’s ICE director, on February 13, Adams announced he would issue an executive order allowing immigration officers on to Rikers Island in another shift in so-called “sanctuary policies”.
The memo has ignited concerns that immigrants will be deterred from utilizing city services, send their children to school, and seek medical attention, further stripping them of their legal and democratic rights.
A week following the memo, Adams attended Trump’s inauguration, the latter since indicating an openness to pardoning Adams.
On Monday, February 10, the Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors in Manhattan to drop the federal corruption case against Adams. The order was sent by Emil Bove, a head official of the Justice Department, who justified the dismissal by claiming the indictment limits Adams’s ability to cooperate with Trump’s immigration crackdown. Though the order is not official yet, the judge overseeing the case has limited power to deny the dismissal by the Justice Department.
It appears cooperation with Trump’s policies has worked in favor of Democratic Mayor Eric Adams. The timing of the Justice Department’s decision to drop the federal case and Adams’s cozying to Trump raises questions of whose interests are being represented by the mayor. The working class, particularly undocumented workers, bear the brunt of these schemes in another calculated attack by the imperialists and their politicians.
While Adams is up for re-election this year, the outcome matters little for workers and migrants. Not only have liberals and social democrats proven their inability to counter attacks from the far-right when holding power, but have in fact facilitated their rise to power and quickly capitulated to them. What is different about Adams is that, out of desperation, his conniving has been forced out into the open, while others with relatively more secure positions can still pretend to represent workers and traffic in their interests. Politics is concentrated economics, and imperialist economics can only manifest in increasingly naked oppression and exploitation.
Photo: NYC Mayor Eric Adams. Credit: Marc A. Hermann / MTA
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