[MUSIC]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now as usual on Wednesdays, our lead Eric Adams reporter Elizabeth Kim with excerpts from, analysis of, and to take some phone calls and texts about Mayor Adams' weekly Tuesday news conference. Liz's top headline on Gothamist today, the written version, "Mayor Adams says, undocumented New Yorkers aren't owed due process, defying the Constitution." Here's part of the exchange the mayor had on that.

Mayor Eric Adams: I'm an American. Americans have certain rights. The Constitution is for Americans. I'm not a person that snuck into this country. My ancestors have been here for a long time.

Brian: Joining us now to break down that exchange plus what Mayor Eric Adams hopes a second Trump administration might do to stem the migrant crisis, as he calls it in New York City, and much more is Elizabeth Kim, WNYC and Gothamist lead Eric Adams reporter. Hi, Liz. Happy Wednesday.

Elizabeth Kim: Happy Wednesday, Brian.

Brian: Want to talk about that clip?

Elizabeth: Sure. To me, it was quite astonishing, not only because the mayor was incorrect, but also because of the politics of this mayor. He, as Brooklyn Borough President and as mayor, has gone out of his way to cultivate ties, donor relationships within the immigrant community. Now, I imagine many of those immigrants are citizens, but I also imagine that some of them are not citizens.

It's ironic because the mayor is currently-- One of the reasons he's being indicted is for accepting illegal foreign donations. This relationship that he has with the immigrant community is quite deep. I just thought that was a really striking statement that he made saying that the Constitution is for Americans, and also this characterization of I guess migrants as people who have snuck into this country.

Brian: I want to play another clip that goes to what I had just asked Congressman Goldman about at the end of the last segment, and that's the distinction between being charged with a crime and being convicted of a crime with respect to what makes you or should make you deportable. You wrote for Gothamist yesterday that quote, "The mayor had asserted that undocumented people who had committed crimes should be deported, suggesting that immigration authorities should not wait for them to stay in trial." Here's a fuller exchange of the clip we played in the intro. New York Times Reporter Dana Rubinstein speaks first.

Dana Rubinstein: In your view, someone is a criminal if they have been charged with a crime because you yourself have been charged with crimes, right?

Mayor Eric Adams: Yes.

Dana Rubinstein: That's one question. The other is if you were a law-abiding asylum seeker in New York City, someone who's doing the best they can to get ahead and all of that, sending their kids to school, would you be scared about the prospect of the incoming administration?

Mayor Eric Adams: Two things. Your first part, I'm an American. Americans have certain rights. The Constitution is for Americans. I'm not a person that snuck into this country. My ancestors have been here for a long time. I don't know if your blouse is made of cotton, but they used to pick some of that. What rights I have? The person that decides to shoot a police officer, they should not have those same rights. That's my position. I look forward to hearing what is the idea of the border czar. I'm looking forward to that.

Brian: The mayor yesterday with New York Times Reporter Dana Rubinstein, part of the exchange they had that went on even longer than that. Liz, I have to say, I was watching that news conference live, and that exchange was like a popcorn moment for me. I was sitting there and I couldn't take my eyes off it, is what that means.

Elizabeth: Because it was so smart of Dana to point out that he himself is being criminally charged and he himself is being given due process, and he has maintained his innocence.

Brian: To my ear, the mayor didn't answer the question, even though Dana asked it three times. He didn't really say, or did he in some way, that he thinks people who are merely charged with crimes should be deported as opposed to convicted. It seemed to me like he was trying to avoid answering the question. Or did he and somehow I missed it?

Elizabeth: Several reporters, including myself, tried to pin the mayor on that because I think he's said it both ways. I have noticed that the mayor in recent weeks has said that he's in favor of deporting, having the city cooperate with ICE on deporting undocumented people who have served their time, which of course suggests that they have been convicted. Prior to that though, he was just generally saying, "who have committed crimes." What does that mean? Are you just being charged and you're being held at Rikers?

He wouldn't say. I really tried very hard to pin him down on that and he said, "This is not an either-or issue, and I want to hear what the borders are." I think his comment about the constitution for Americans and why someone like him gets due process, I felt in some way he was trying to draw a distinction between the rights that he gets and the rights that a migrant has who is accused of a crime. I think he's opening the door to this discussion and debate that I imagine the city will be having in the next several months, depending on what Trump does about what is the bar, should it be that they're charged? Should it be that they have due process?

At one point, the mayor said something suggesting almost like if the evidence was incontrovertible-- He said something to the effect that if you are caught on camera shooting a police officer. I think these are all fair questions. I think the way he delivered it was incorrect, but that is, I think the idea behind it is that I think he wants to introduce a discussion around changing the city's current sanctuary laws.

Brian: You also had an exchange, a follow-up question really from another reporter's question on this same topic. We're going to play that exchange now that starts folks with Liz's question to the mayor.

Elizabeth: I wanted to follow up on Josie's question about where you stand when it comes to undocumented New Yorkers who are accused of committing crimes. I have heard you say that you thought de Blasio and the former city council went too far when they came up with that rule that you had to be convicted of a crime, a certain list, the 170 crimes that they laid out. I've also heard you recently say that you are in favor of cooperating with ICE after the person serves their time.

Mayor Eric Adams: Yes.

Elizabeth: Does that mean that you would like to see them get due process as opposed to just being charged, which is what it was under Bloomberg?

Mayor Eric Adams: Mike was one of my favorite mayors. My position is people who commit crimes in our city, you have abdicated your right to be in our city, and I'm open to figure out the best way to address that. My goal is to always give people due process, but my goal is to sit down and hear what the plans are on the current administration to address this issue.

You commit crimes in our city, I'm always going to be of the belief in a position that you don't have a right to be in our city. If someone commits a crime and they face jail time, I want them deported after they serve, but I'm willing to sit down and hear the plan of the border czar.

Elizabeth: You might be willing to consider-

Mayor Eric Adams: I'm open to anything to get criminals out of our city. I'm open to anything to get criminals who come to our country and attack and abuse innocent-

Elizabeth: Don't you think it's either-

Another Reporter: [inaudible 00:09:34]

Elizabeth: [inaudible 00:09:34] due process [inaudible 00:09:35].

Mayor Eric Adams: No. You are either/or. That's not who I am. I'm willing to sit down with Czar and find out what his plans are.

Brian: For listeners who couldn't hear your follow-up question there at the end, you were just trying to get him to say yes or no. You're either for due process for the accused or you're not, and he said, "You are either/or. That's not who I am." He just wouldn't say.

Elizabeth: I'd like to remind listeners that the law is very, very clear. In 2014, former Mayor de Blasio and the city council reached this law, which established a list of 170 serious crimes. If an undocumented person had been convicted of one of those crimes in the last five years, and a judge had signed a warrant allowing federal authorities to detain that person, only in that case does the city cooperate with federal immigration agents. That is quite clear. That is the law.

I think the question now is the mayor, he's been openly critical of this law. He says that it's gone too far. Yes, we can have that debate. I think he's now opening the door and he's showing quite a lot of deference to the Trump administration in terms of of where he stands on it. He says, "First, I want to hear what they feel about it." Then, I guess, as mayor, he could try to scale that law back.

Brian: We've been talking so far about the mayor's relationship to the coming mass deportation and standards for that. You can weigh in if you want. Do you think listeners, that accusation or conviction of a crime should be the standard for somebody being deportable on the basis of criminal or alleged criminal activity? 212-433-9692. I want to go on to another thing that really struck me from yesterday's news conference.

In your piece for Gothamist, you tied his comments on migrants' due process to the mayor's own legal troubles, and you did it here too. Relating to all of this as a next extension of it, Trump has expressed sympathy for Adams, suggesting that he could offer the mayor a pardon for the Federal Justice Department charges against the mayor. The mayor also commented this way, therefore, on President Biden's pardon of his son Hunter Biden-- Let's take a listen.

Mayor Eric Adams: I'm going to read the front page of The New York Times. Let me find that sentence. "President Biden and President-elect Donald Trump now agree on one thing, the Biden Justice Department has been politicized." Does that sound familiar? I rest my case. [laughs]

Brian: That was the lead line of that New York Times story. He got that right. I brought that up with Congressman Goldman in the previous segment, Liz. Why do you think the mayor highlighted that? If the answer is obvious, "Because it's in his interest.", did anybody get to follow up with him? I didn't hear it if they did. If he's worried about undermining trust in the justice system generally by painting it with that broad brush, which a more nuanced look would not.

Elizabeth: He wasn't asked that question, and that is an excellent question. He was asked why does he feel that his case has been politicized given that the investigation according to prosecutors began before he was mayor. The mayor did not answer that. In general, the mayor tries very hard not to talk about his case. He said yesterday, he has been instructed by his lawyers not to talk about the case.

He broke with that a bit yesterday for that moment, which I also thought was very extraordinary. I was sitting in the front row, and you could just feel the sense of vindication coming from the mayor in that moment reading it from The New York Times. He later says, "We all know The New York Times never gets it wrong." Which is a little jive at The Times. The mayor immediately after he was indicted in September, he came out and he had said that he was targeted because of his very vocal criticism of Biden's handling of the migrant crisis.

That criticism, which was very pitched, started around last year during the height of the crisis. What made it very notable was not just that the mayor was complaining about not getting enough money from the federal government, but he was also calling out the President by name. He was calling out the President by name knowing probably very well that the President was going into a reelection year against Donald Trump and that the polls were showing that it was going to be a tight race.

He got a lot of flack from Democrats who said, "You're basically handing Republican talking points." Which they did seize. The mayor said things like, "The migrant crisis is destroying New York City." At one point, I remember him saying that President Biden doesn't care about New York City. The rhetoric was quite significant and notable. Then, what happened was it died down and the mayor stopped talking about it. Soon after, he got a lot of backlash, I think, from Democrats. He really tamped it down.

Now, what I think has happened with Trump being elected is I think the mayor feels, in many ways, more free to come back to this original talking point which is that he is very, very angry about the way the migrant crisis was handled by the federal government and the Biden administration and the cost that New York City had to bear for it. Yesterday, he gave a slideshow outlining all the ways in which this crisis cost-- Not the city, but what he was trying to get across is it cost taxpayers, it cost New Yorkers.

Brian: At least in the short term. There's a longer conversation to be had there with the mayor at some point about the long-term benefits of immigration to New York City, how mass immigration to New York City keeps revitalizing New York City. People move in, in great numbers, people move out in great numbers, and it keeps getting revitalized generation after generation because of mass immigration.

Maybe when we look at the effects on the taxpayers 15 years from now of this wave that has come in recently, it's going to be a net plus. We don't know that, but it may well, and he's not taking that possibility into account.

Elizabeth: That's right because I think that what he's looking at was he's looking at his electability. He's looking at the effect of this crisis on his first three years and being forced to make those cuts, which were widely unpopular. Now, critics have argued that he went too far with the cuts and he overestimated the cost of the crisis, and he mismanaged some of those contracts. Those are all fair criticisms too.

Brian: He did seem to hold out hope. I wonder if there's any reporting that backs up that there's a basis for hope about this, that the Trump administration would do what he's been very critical-- I think most New Yorkers would agree, rightfully critical of the Biden administration for not doing, and that is giving quicker work authorization to all the asylum seekers who are here so they don't become charges of the taxpayers.

The mayor related that to his request that the federal government place different groups of migrants in different cities for their first few years here so New York City doesn't have too much of a concentration of them. As he pointed out, there are a lot of cities that really want more immigrants because they're suffering from depopulation, but if they don't get work authorization, then they're a burden, not a boon. He seemed to hold out hope that while the Biden administration with its politics wouldn't do that, that the Trump administration, which as we know, is, rhetorically at least, so anti-immigrant, might do that. Did you hear him that way? Do you think there's any evidence to suggest that they might give quicker work authorization than Biden did?

Elizabeth: I don't know, Brian, because I think that the politics around doing-- It sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea, but I think the politics around that are very difficult because here in New York State, the mayor himself tried that tactic. He tried to send busloads of migrants upstate, and it was widely unpopular and he got pushback in many instances, and the governor didn't want to back him on that either. I would be surprised whether Trump is any more successful in doing something like that on a national basis.

Brian: We're going to leave it here, except I'll mention some of the texts that are coming in on this topic. One refers back to the Biden pardon of his son says, "This is one of many reasons that this pardon was so ill-conceived regaining the high ground regarding the fairness of the justice system will be a long haul." Another listener writes, "Needless to say, I can imagine that one of Trump's first pardons will go to Mayor Adams, Ugg." Someone else on the opposite side says, "If, what they call, illegal migrant commits a crime, they're already guilty of a crime, illegal immigration, so they should go." There's a smattering of reaction to what we've been talking about mostly with Liz Kim about the Mayor's News conference yesterday, which was the predominant topic. Liz, thanks as always. Probably talk to you next Wednesday.

Elizabeth: Thank you, Brian.

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.