Mayor Adams’ Pact with Trump is a Disaster for NYC
David R. Jones, La Nueva Mayoria / The New Majority
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.
In the past couple of months, Adams chose to publicly kowtow to President Donald Trump, making a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago , attending his inauguration, and more recently pledging cooperation with President Trump’s Border Czar on Fox News. 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.
Recent developments in the ongoing corruption investigation involving Mayor Adams appear to reveal the mayor’s true motives for aligning with President Trump. This became clear after the U.S. attorney in Manhattan and several U.S. Justice Department prosecutors resigned last week in protest rather than sign an order to dismiss the case against the mayor, so he could more easily cooperate with President Trump’s efforts on immigration enforcement.
This situation has raised concerns in New York regarding the mayor’s capacity to manage the city autonomously. Notably, prominent Democratic leaders have expressed their desire for his resignation or removal, and four senior officials within his administration have chosen to resign this week due to their inability to fulfill their oath of office as they are being compelled by the mayor to refrain from criticizing President Donald Trump’s administration on policies that conflict with their work.
To sum up, this 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.
Regardless of the outcome of this political crisis, Governor Kathy Hochul must take up the megaphone on the immigration issue and stand up for the thousands of immigrants in our state .
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.
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.
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.
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. If he remains in office, the chaos, fear and pain that ensues will be on his watch.