Great news: Mayor Adams and Trump border czar-designate Tom Homan seemed to reach a real meeting of minds in Thursday’s sitdown.
But can they get the City Council and Gov. Hochul on board with the effort to free Gotham of thousands of “known offender” criminal illegal migrants?
Adams has now embraced Queens Councilman Robert Holden’s call to reopen the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at Rikers — but city law says no resources can go to assist ICE and bars NYPD and jail officials from reporting any wrongdoers to the feds.
But while Adams wants to tweak the law, the hard-left-dominated council won’t go along.
OK, civic-minded cops and others may be able to make a difference with anonymous calls to ICE, especially when the chain of command clearly won’t mind.
And maybe the mayor’s lawyers can come up with an executive order that will bridge the gap.
But full cooperation means undoing the law passed under Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Kafkaesque sanctuary regime where only undocumented immigrants convicted of 170 felonies are eligible to be turned over to ICE — if the agency so requests.
That went mindlessly beyond the initial sanctuary executive orders of Mayors Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani — meant to ensure that crime victims or witnesses felt safe from deportation if they came forward to city law enforcement.
At least Hochul can rescind then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive order that made state courthouses off-limits to ICE.
And Congress can counter the state court ruling that it’s unlawful for local governments to comply with federal ICE detainers — by declaring that illegal entry into the country is a criminal offense, not just a civil one.
But Congress and Team Trump will also need to put real pressure on the City Council and other local progressive lawmakers across the country who insist on opposing any deportations, even of MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gangbangers.
The obvious move is to start denying major federal funds to localities with extreme “sanctuary” policies.
See how progressives feel about their “principles” when it means they’ll have to slash spending to stand by them — especially if the federal cuts focus on social programs, not policing.
Condition all federal school aid on immigration cooperation, and you’ll see the United Federation of Teachers putting its muscle on the right side.
Adams can also shift the odds by announcing his new Charter Commission will put “sanctuary repeal” before city voters next year: That will not only make keeping the law less worth the effort to the council, but it’ll make progressives fear high turnout by voters determined to undo such lefty nonsense.
Getting known criminal migrants out of the country ought to be a no-brainer; sadly, getting the city government fully on board requires getting through some of the hardest heads in town.