Trump ‘Border Czar’ Tom Homan to Meet with Mayor Adams, Turning Up Heat on Sanctuary City Status

 

It's a high-stakes meeting for the mayor that comes just after Trump’s Justice Department instructed prosecutors to drop their criminal case against him. 

This article originally appeared in The City.

By Gwynne Hogan

NEW YORK - Thomas D. Homan, who President Donald Trump has placed in charge of his deportation efforts, is set to meet with Mayor Eric Adams Thursday — three days after the Department of Justice requested federal prosecutors drop corruption charges against the mayor citing a need for his assistance on immigration enforcement.

Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first term, has said he hopes to “reach an agreement where his officers will help my officers remove these public safety threats.”

 

“[Adams] is all in on arresting public safety threats [who] are here illegally and helping me find these missing children. So, I will meet with him Thursday. We'll see what he says,” Homan said in an interview Tuesday night with 77WABC radio hosts John Catsimatidis and Rita Cosby. 

Advocates for immigrants warn that the meeting and any potential collaboration could test the limits of the city’s 2017 sanctuary law, which bars the use of city “resources, property, and information” to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts.

“It raises the question of whether he's complying with local law,” said Harold Solis, the co-legal director at the immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New York. “Is there some level of coordination happening here around immigration enforcement that otherwise is forbidden under the city law?”

In a statement about the upcoming meeting, spokesperson Kayla Mamelak said, “Mayor Adams has also been clear that he wants to work with the new federal administration, not war with them. That work includes meeting with 'Border Czar' Tom Homan to discuss going after the violent offenders who are wreaking havoc on our streets. We will continue to explore all lawful processes to remove violent migrants from our city.”

She didn’t say where the meeting would occur or at what hour. 

Even as Adams has said he won’t publicly criticize Trump, and instructed members of his administration to follow suit, the city and state have still drawn the new administration’s wrath. 

On Tuesday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency clawed back $80 million from city coffers that the agency had allocated to reimburse the city for money spent on assisting migrants. (City Hall said that Adams will bring that up at his meeting with Homan, and that its attorneys are studying potential challenges to that move.)

Hours later, new U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi announced the DOJ was suing New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Letitia James, and Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Mark Schroeder for limiting cooperation with immigration authorities. That would follow a similar lawsuit the department filed against Illinois officials over that state’s sanctuary policies. 

New York state’s so-called “Green Light Law” that went into effect in 2019 allows undocumented immigrants to get drivers licenses, while barring those records from being shared with immigration authorities. Homan lambasted the law in an interview with the Buffalo News last month.

‘Some Collaterals’

During his Tuesday evening interview appearance with Catismatidis, a billionaire ally of both Trump and Adams who owns the radio station, Homan had words of caution for Adams.

“Either he comes to the table or we go around them,” Homan said. The two met previously in December. 

Catsimatidis — who’d dined with the mayor Monday night at Gallagher's Steakhouse, where he said that he broke the news that the DOJ wanted the charges against the mayor dropped — said in his interview with Homans that he expected Adams to play ball.

“I think Mayor Eric Adams is going to cooperate with you 150%,” he said.  

In its letter instructing prosecutors to drop the case against Adams and not pick up any investigation of him at least until after the November mayoral election, the Department of Justice cited the need for the mayor’s assistance in combating “illegal immigration.”

“Mayor Adams’ ability to support critical, ongoing federal efforts “to protect the American people from the disastrous effects of unlawful mass migration and resettlement,” the memo read.

While city agencies and officials are allowed to coordinate with federal agencies in instances where there is an underlying criminal investigation or various other circumstances, the city’s 2017 sanctuary law explicitly bars such collaboration for immigration enforcement purposes.

 

The New York City Council has in other cases sued the Adams administration when its leadership contended laws the body had passed weren’t being adhered to, as was the case in their ban on solitary confinement, or attempting to broaden the pool of people eligible for CityFHEPS housing vouchers. 

Solis, from Make the Road, said the Council could opt to sue down the line if leadership held the city’s sanctuary laws were violated. 

A spokesperson for the Council didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon but Councilmember Alexis Avilés (D-Brooklyn), who chairs its immigration committee, said she didn’t think the meeting itself presented a violation of city sanctuary policy. 

“Any elected official certainly can meet any other elected official. That's part of our job to meet with each other,” she said. Still, she added, the timing of the meeting just three days after the DOJ moved to drop charges against Adams, was troubling. 

“Clearly he works for the Trump administration and Homan and not for New Yorkers or our interests,” she said. 

The Homan–Adams meeting follows days of upheaval after the city revised guidance to local government employees that had appeared to ask them to give deference to ICE agents who attempted to enter city buildings without a warrant. City attorneys walked that earlier this week. 

Trump’s interagency federal task forces led by ICE have been making arrests around New York City, and while officials say they are targeting people with underlying criminal charges or convictions, they have conceded the efforts have also ensnared people with none.

“We do have some collaterals because we have to go in the neighborhood and find these guys and when we find others with them they’re coming too,” Homan told Catsimatidis on Tuesday evening.

It’s entirely unclear how many “collaterals” have been swept up in New York City in dozens of immigration arrests since Trump’s inauguration. ICE hasn’t responded to repeated requests for comment from THE CITY or other outlets.

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