Overview:
Citing reporting by THE CITY, NYC Council leaders are urging an investigation into whether or not NYPD shared data with federal brokers, violating sanctuary legal guidelines. The probe request follows deportations and ICE actions tied to NYPD data.
By Gwynne Hogan | THE CITY (Reposted by The Haitian Occasions)
Two Metropolis Council leaders are requesting a probe into whether or not the NYPD has been violating New York Metropolis’s sanctuary legal guidelines, that are speculated to bar native authorities from collaborating in federal immigration enforcement.
In a letter despatched Monday, Speaker Adrienne Adams and Oversight and Investigations Committee Chair Gale Brewer requested the Division of Investigation to look into a number of incidents this 12 months the place the traces between civil immigration enforcement and felony investigations might have been blurred.
“We are involved by current reviews that data supplied to federal businesses by the NYPD is now being utilized in civil immigration proceedings in ways in which might violate New York Metropolis’s legal guidelines and New Yorkers’ Constitutional rights,” the lawmakers wrote, including that “these incidents seem to have resulted in a number of individuals being detained or despatched to a jail in El Salvador with out due course of.”
The letter cites a report from THE CITY and Documented about 19-year-old Merwil Gutiérrez Flores, who the NYPD arrested and charged with gun possession in The Bronx however not prosecuted. Nonetheless, he ended up in FBI after which ICE custody, and was swiftly deported to CECOT, the infamous El Salvadoran jail.
The letter additionally mentions the NYPD providing Homeland Security Investigations with the sealed arrest record of Leqaa Kordia, who was arrested exterior Columbia College throughout pro-Palestinian demonstrations within the spring. Federal officers instructed the NYPD they had been investigating her for cash laundering, which was why police officers mentioned they shared the document. However Kordia was already in ICE custody when ICE made the request, and federal attorneys later used the NYPD doc in its deportation case in opposition to her.
A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams — who had been dealing with federal corruption fees till the Trump administration dropped that case, and who’s vowed not to publicly criticize the president, which the letter-writers say has diminished public belief in his management — didn’t instantly return a request for touch upon the letter. The NYPD additionally didn’t instantly return a request for remark.
Clodagh McGowan, a spokesperson for the DOI, mentioned they acquired the letter and are reviewing it.
In April, the Council sued the Adams administration over an executive order permitting ICE to reopen an workplace on Rikers Island, which a decide has quickly blocked from occurring. The mayor’s attorneys have mentioned the lawsuit is a political ploy by somebody looking for his job, as Speaker Adams, who’s term-limited out of workplace, is working for the Democratic mayoral nomination.
Whereas the NYPD repeatedly collaborates with federal businesses on felony issues, it’s barred from cooperating on civil immigration issues below a collection of legal guidelines signed by former Mayor Invoice de Blasio.
However in an period the place the Trump administration has made mass deportations a precedence, with different federal businesses deputized for that effort, the Council members’ letter notes mounting issues that the NYPD is likely to be aiding in these efforts, “deliberately or unintentionally.”
The sanctuary metropolis legal guidelines, they wrote, “are grounded in a easy precept: when immigrant communities worry cooperation with regulation enforcement, everyone seems to be much less protected.”
They added that “New Yorkers should belief that their very own metropolis authorities won’t take part of their civil rights being violated, and these current episodes elevate critical doubts that ought to be urgently addressed. Any violations of metropolis legal guidelines by our personal businesses undermine the rule of regulation, public confidence, and public security.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch has repeatedly mentioned the NYPD doesn’t collaborate with the federal authorities on civil immigration enforcement however defends collaboration on felony issues as important to maintain New Yorkers protected.
Requested final month at a Council listening to if she was contemplating adjustments to the NYPD’s relationship with federal businesses in mild of the Trump administration’s deportation push, she had a blunt reply.
“The quick, straight reply to that is no,” she testified.