NYC immigration fears come to fruition as Trump enters office
After two years of an increase in arrivals of migrants and asylum seekers to New York City, migration funding and policies were already a sore spot between Mayor Eric Adams and City Council. Well before President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, words were said, fears were stoked — and people were right to be worried.
At Trump’s second inaugural address, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, he announced executive orders to reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy, redeploy the military to the southern border, designate criminal cartels and organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs), and enact the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — a wartime authority that allows the president to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy nation.
He also ordered federal agencies to not provide citizen documents to certain children born in the U.S. to parents who are not themselves citizens or permanent residents, and stripped schools and churches of immigration enforcement protections. Trump has a long history with birtherism, going all the way back to the lies he spread about former President Barack Obama.
Adams was present at Trump’s inauguration and hasn’t spoken out about any of his executive orders that could target immigrant New Yorkers. He even went so far as to do an interview with Tucker Carlson, a far-right analyst, in what many are interpreting as another desperate attempt to secure a pardon from Trump.
The city’s Black, Brown, and Asian immigrant groups have been furiously organizing on the ground while elected officials were trying to cement legal protections for immigrant New Yorkers.
On January 16, ahead of Trump’s second inaugural address, Councilmember Alexa Avilés hosted a rally and a council hearing of the Committee on Immigration. A massive showing of advocates and immigration organizations were in attendance, like the NYC Council Progressive Caucus, NYC Council LGBTQIA+ Caucus, Make the Road NY, New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), African Communities Together, Immigrant Defense Project, The Bronx Defenders, New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Mixteca, Asian American Federation, Mekong NYC, Coalition for the Homeless, Workers Justice Project, Literary Assistance Center, Human Services Council, STOP (Surveillance Technology Oversight Project), New York Doctors Coalition, La Colmena, Chinese Planning Council, Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center, We Are Afghans, and Families for Freedom. Collectively, they feared a mass deportation agenda of about three million people in the city and fruitlessly called on Adams to uphold the city’s existing sanctuary laws.
“NYC has always been an immigrant city — we benefit greatly from the economic and cultural contributions of our diverse and vibrant communities—and yet, our Mayor is not willing to uphold our longstanding protections for those New Yorkers,” said Avilés. “Let’s be clear: any threat to our immigrant population of three million New Yorkers is a threat to every working-class person in NYC, as mass deportations threaten our economy, tax revenue, and local businesses.”
“This anti-immigrant rhetoric spewed by Mayor Adams, these tired, archaic, and cruel criminalization tropes, is not about making anybody safer. They are about making him more powerful. He wants to sacrifice us — Black and Brown New Yorkers — so he can cop a plea with Trump,” said Abraham Paulos, deputy director for Black Alliance for Just Immigration. “But we are not lambs for the slaughter. He wants to systematically dismantle the very protections that New Yorkers fought for and that afford all immigrant communities real safety. We demand that this City Council continue to defend New Yorkers from the police-to-deportation pipeline that targets Black immigrant communities with a relentless, devastating force.”
“Attempting to reinterpret the 14th Amendment’s clear guarantee of Birthright Citizenship is unconstitutional and would harm — not help — immigrants fully contributing to this country,” said FWD.us President Todd Schulte.
Trump’s executive orders have kicked off a slew of lawsuits.
New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that she and a coalition of 18 states are challenging Trump’s orders to end birthright citizenship as a violation of the constitution. They filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The states also requested a preliminary injunction filed with the court to prevent the order from going through.
“This fundamental right to birthright citizenship, rooted in the 14th Amendment and born from the ashes of slavery, is a cornerstone of our nation’s commitment to justice. Our constitution is not open to reinterpretation by executive order or presidential decree,” said James in a statement.
Separately, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Hampshire, ACLU of Maine, ACLU of Massachusetts, Asian Law Caucus, State Democracy Defenders Fund, and Legal Defense Fund (LDF) on behalf of organizations like the New Hampshire Indonesian Community Support, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and Make the Road New York, also filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on the basis that his executive order flouts Constitution and the Supreme Court precedent.
“Denying citizenship to U.S.-born children is not only unconstitutional — it’s also a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values. Birthright citizenship is part of what makes the United States the strong and dynamic nation that it is,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU. “This order seeks to repeat one of the gravest errors in American history, by creating a permanent subclass of people born in the U.S. who are denied full rights as Americans. We will not let this attack on newborns and future generations of Americans go unchallenged.”
Karla McKanders, director of LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute, added that: “From the 1790 Naturalization Act to the infamous Dred Scott decision, U.S. citizenship has long been shaped to uphold racial hierarchy. By sidestepping the constitutional amendment process, this executive order attempts to unilaterally rewrite the 14th Amendment — an essential Reconstruction-era measure that granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S., including formerly enslaved people. This action seeks to resurrect a racialized notion of who is American in opposition to LDF’s commitment working towards a multi-racial democracy.”
The post NYC immigration fears come to fruition as Trump enters office appeared first on New York Amsterdam News.