‘He’s compromised’—NYC Dems Fear Mayor Will Trade Deportations For Trump Pardon
Eric Adams is politically vulnerable, under indictment, and has just one card left to play.
WHEN ERIC ADAMS HIT THE FAMED Apollo theater in Harlem on Thursday for his State of the City address, he stood on a stage where celebrated performances have taken place for 90 years.
And no one has been performing on the political stage quite like the embattled New York City mayor since Donald Trump’s November win.
The indicted mayor—who faces a five-count case alleging he benefited from bribes and gifts from people with ties to the Turkish government—urged Trump to “fix the border” within a week of the presidential election, and said he was open to collaborating with the incoming administration on immigration enforcement, which includes a vast mass-deportation plan.
It was the continuation of a tough-on-immigration posture for Adams, who once called himself the “Biden of Brooklyn,” and who has said he wants to focus on criminals and not mass deportation. At a press conference in December, Adams suggested that undocumented immigrants don’t have the right to due process, saying “the Constitution is for Americans.”
“I’m not a person that snuck into this country,” he added for good measure. “My ancestors have been here for a long time.” Adams later walked back the comments after criticism. But he subsequently has met with Trump’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan.
Adams’s evolution seems likely to be more than just rhetorical. In 2024, he opposed sanctuary laws passed by the New York City Council to shield immigrants. After Trump’s reelection, the mayor said that he is now prepared to use executive action to loosen those laws, easing the way for federal law enforcement to deport people living in New York City. Speaking about migrant criminals at a December press conference, he said violent Venezuelan gang members were making their way to New York City.
“Cancel me, because I’m going to protect the people of this city,” he declared. Elon Musk and other MAGA allies shared his remarks widely on social media.
Adams’s tough-on-immigration turn reflects a larger shift among Democrats across the country as they try to stabilize their standing after November’s election losses. But unlike the rest of his party, the New York City mayor has an incentive that isn’t entirely political.
Hounded by prosecutors, who on Wednesday revealed they had uncovered “additional criminal conduct” by Adams, facing a possible trial in April, and staring down the possibility of 45 years in jail if convicted, there appears to be one last hope for hizzoner: a pardon from Trump.
And Trump knows it. Asked at a Mar-a-Lago press conference in December if he would consider a pardon for Adams, the president-elect said he was open to it.
“Yeah I would,” Trump said. “I think that he was treated pretty unfairly.”
The situation has riled New York City political observers, immigration advocates, and Democrats, who see a desperate mayor willing to do the Trump administration’s bidding on deportations for the prospect of a pardon.
“He’s compromised,” former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito told The Bulwark. She oversaw an expansion of sanctuary protections for undocumented New Yorkers and organized the first-ever convening of sanctuary cities in 2017. “So yes, this playing footsie with Trump is very clear, from the language he’s been using, like saying the criticism of Trump being an authoritarian is too harsh, to saying maybe some coordination can happen on deportations. He has something he wants from this administration to make everything go away.”
Albert Fox Cahn, a surveillance and data technology watchdog who founded the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said he fears that Adams will use the copious amount of data that the city has on its residents to help the Trump administration hunt down immigrants.
“Adams is showing that when they go low we can go to the sewer,” he said. “He’s selling out our undocumented neighbors in the hopes it will win him a pardon for his growing list of crimes . . . He will only hurt a lot of New Yorkers in the process.”
Cahn warned that Trump would seek to use government data to find immigrants who have lived peacefully in the city for years to orchestrate traumatizing deportation efforts meant to instill even more fear.
“What terrifies me so much is for years we were told if we spend more money to get more data we can make this city more efficient,” he said, “but we may now be positioned to use that data to help make deportations more efficient.”
Adams’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment, including about whether the prospects of a pardon would affect the mayor’s stance on mass-deportation efforts. The office of Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer forwarded The Bulwark request to Adams’s office. The mayor’s deputy press secretary and Latino communications advisor did not respond to a request for comment, and the office of Adams’s city commissioner of immigrant affairs, Manuel Castro, asked for a list of questions and then said he was not available for an interview.
Asked on The View in November whether he was cozying up to Trump to secure a pardon, Adams declined to answer the question.
ADAMS’S NEW POSTURE, advocates warn, could have effects beyond just New York. It could force other mayors of Democratic-led cities to weigh how to engage the Trump administration and those carrying out its mass-deportation plans.
“It 100 percent would set a dangerous precedent,” said Daniel Coats, the director of public affairs for Make the Road New York, a progressive advocacy organization. He argued the city’s sanctuary laws helped to establish new understandings about ways other localities could proactively protect immigrants.
New York City has more than 400,000 undocumented immigrants, many of whom have lived in the city for decades. Roughly 225,000 migrants have come through New York City just since 2022. During the first Trump administration, city officials made a show of standing up to the then-president’s attempts to target undocumented communities. Activists say New York does not comply with around ninety-five percent of detainer requests to hold immigrants for federal authorities.
“If the mayor now wants to direct his staff on how to get around these laws with executive orders, as he has said publicly, it’s a big blow not just to the city’s long history, but also runs counter to how immigrants pulled this city and state through the pandemic,” said Coats. “Participating in this next terrible chapter in the country’s history, like family separation, is not going to be tolerated.”
When Adams won the mayor’s office in 2021, it was on a pledge of inclusivity for immigrant communities.
“‘We should protect our immigrants.’ Period,” he said in October 2021. “Yes, New York City will remain a sanctuary city under an Adams administration.”
When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began bussing migrants to cities like New York, Adams was welcoming.
“He was hand-in-hand with us, welcoming buses and saying, ‘We’re a city of immigrants,’” said Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition. “But his shift with regard to language on new arrivals seemed to coincide with the investigation from the [U.S. Attorney for the] Southern District [of New York] about him. That’s when he started to turn against our community.”
The sheer number of migrants also began to put a drain on city resources. And Adams later warned that the crisis would “destroy New York City.” His police chief alleged a “migrant crime wave” was “washing over” New York, despite no data to support the claim. The mayor, wearing a bulletproof vest over a Fendi scarf, even joined police in an early-morning raid in February to nab five people accused of a robbery spree directed by a Venezuelan ringleader.
With Trump set to assume office in a matter of days, New York political experts expect Adams to push the rhetoric, policies, and showmanship even further.
“What choice does he have?” asked Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran political consultant who worked for former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. “He can tell the government ‘No,’ but whatever he does will be very public and Trump has made this the issue of the moment. It’s complicated by his perceived need for a pardon and because things seem to be out of control in New York. How does Adams get out of this? Does he care if he pisses off the left entirely? Does he need them to get reelected? If his calculation says no, he’ll go ahead and help the government.”
Adams is running for re-election at a time when other opponents—like New York City Comptroller Brad Lander—have been more welcoming toward immigrants. Lander released a March report showing that providing legal services to immigrants and new arrivals in the city could yield billions in economic benefits. The report also said that providing access to attorneys for immigrants in New York facing deportation proceedings “could result in an additional 53,000 New Yorkers” being able to remain in the state.
Sheinkopf said if he were handicapping the race now, Lander would be second behind former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is eyeing the mayoralty for his political comeback after he resigned in 2021 amid scandals including sexual harassment allegations and scrutiny over his administration’s handling of nursing home death numbers.
Cuomo has described his political troubles as orchestrated by progressive Democrats and Trump-supporting Republicans. But he could leech support from Adams, particularly among black voters. A person who spoke to Cuomo told The Bulwark that the former governor shared with allies that he was leading Adams with black voters in private polling last year.
A Cuomo ally who worked for him during Trump’s first administration laid out why accommodating the second Trump administration’s deportation policies might not be straightforward for Adams.
“Immigration is complicated but there’s also the small matter that migrants are not illegal immigrants and most voters don’t understand that,” the ally said. “With Adams, it’s nakedly transparent—he’s trying to willfully combine these two issues—the migrant problem, with Trump’s traditional demagoguery of illegal immigration.”
Adams has his defenders, who argue that he is more in touch with voters than his fellow Democrats believe, and who view cooperation with Trump as strategically defensible. One of them is political consultant and former Trump advisor Sam Nunberg, who said the scandal-plagued mayor will cooperate with the Trump administration, but not strictly because he’s angling for a pardon.
“Does he want a pardon? Absolutely,” Nunberg said. “But would he have done this regardless? I wouldn’t have been surprised if he figured out some model to cooperate on this issue. He’s been talking about the problems that illegal immigrants have brought to New York. He even asked Biden for help, so he has a history there.”
ONE LAST THING
An interesting one in the National Catholic Register, as the new archbishop in D.C. comes out against mass deportations and says he’ll be watching Trump’s plans closely.
“We are called always to have a sense of the dignity of every human person,” Cardinal Robert McElroy said. “And thus, plans which have been talked about at some levels of having a wider indiscriminate massive deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”
Meanwhile, an NBC News story Wednesday outlined possible plans for a major “showcase” raid in the Washington D.C. area once Trump takes power.
I think many or most of the immigrants that Adams refers to, the ones that have been in the news, are in fact here legally. They are asylum seekers who are here legally until and unless their applications are denied. It's scary to think Adams once was a cop--or...it adds up.
Thank you for such an interesting post. A great addition to the Bulwark lineup.