If federal immigration officers show up on New York City property, a one-page memo distributed by City Hall lawyers last month has instructions for how city employees should respond: Take their information, ask if they have a warrant and call a city lawyer to deal with the matter.
But the memo also says that workers should comply with the officers’ requests or let them in if the workers feel “threatened” or fear for their safety. And it warns that actively harboring an undocumented immigrant is a federal crime.
The wording seems to give leeway to city workers — including at migrant shelters, schools and hospitals — to allow federal immigration agents to enter city property under certain conditions, even without a warrant.
The memo reflects how New York City officials are grappling with how to balance their status as the country’s largest sanctuary city with Mayor Eric Adams’s stated desire to work with President Trump as he carries out his crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
City Hall officials stressed that the memo was crafted to provide uniform guidance for employees across city agencies, and with the safety of frontline workers in mind, especially if a visit by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents escalated and turned violent.
“We do not want city workers getting into physical altercations in any way with any nonlocal law enforcement officer,” Camille Joseph Varlack, a deputy mayor and the mayor’s chief of staff, said in an interview on Thursday.
But some unions, immigration activists and legal service providers criticized the guidance, arguing that it was too permissive and could pave the way for ICE to easily access migrant shelters without proper authorization.
Henry Garrido, the executive director of District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal employees’ union, said that many workers had been confused about what to do if federal agents showed up at their workplaces.
“It has been really difficult when you don’t have clear and transparent guidance as to how to handle ICE coming into the city and the agencies,” Mr. Garrido said in an interview.
Others argued that the guidance could deter immigrants from seeking city services, plunging them deeper into the shadows.
“This guidance is deeply alarming and will likely deter vulnerable individuals and families with children from entering the local shelter system due to fear of detention and deportation,” said Kathryn Kliff, a lawyer at the Legal Aid Society.
She argued that the city should instruct its employees to deny ICE officers entry into shelters if they do not produce a warrant signed by a judge, which she said had been the standard policy at the Department of Homeless Services.
The uproar over the memo’s arrival at city shelters, first reported by Hell Gate, a digital news outlet, comes as Mr. Adams, a Democrat who has said he wants to weaken the city’s sanctuary provisions, is looking to establish a close working relationship with the president, especially on immigration. The Trump administration has also been considering in recent days whether to drop the federal corruption indictment that Mr. Adams faces as he seeks re-election.
The memo suggests some level of acquiescence to Mr. Trump, who has vowed to go after cities and states that he believes are obstructing his efforts to detain and deport undocumented immigrants.
Last month, after City Hall sent its memo, the Justice Department issued a memo that threatened local officials with prosecution if they failed to comply with the president’s immigration initiatives. On Thursday, the Trump administration followed through by filing a lawsuit against officials in Chicago, Cook County and the state of Illinois, arguing that their lack of cooperation with the enforcement of federal immigration laws had resulted in “countless criminals being released into Chicago.”
And by rescinding a Biden-era policy, the Trump administration has cleared the way for ICE to conduct arrests in places that were previously considered off-limits because they were “sensitive locations,” including churches and schools.
Since Mr. Trump was sworn in, Ms. Joseph Varlack said that federal law enforcement officers have shown up at some city premises, including a few city offices, at least one shelter and one hospital, but not at any schools. City officials could not specify whether the officers were ICE agents or from another federal agency, but said that they were not aware of any arrests on city premises.
“It hasn’t been a deluge, to be perfectly honest,” Ms. Joseph Varlack said. “But there have been a few incidents a week.”
City Hall sent its memo on Jan. 13 to lawyers at city agencies, laying out 11 escalating steps that city employees should follow if federal law enforcement shows up on city premises. Each agency was told to apply that guidance within its ranks.
The memo sent to shelters, for example, instructs employees to first ask for the officers’ names and badge numbers, then ask if they have a warrant or subpoena, and contact the agency’s general counsel for guidance. It also says they should not engage in a “physical or verbal altercation” with a law enforcement officer.
It encourages workers to comply with officers’ requests and let them enter the site if they “reasonably feel threatened or fear for your safety or the safety of others around you.” The memo also warns employees that “taking actions that are intended to conceal, harbor or shield from detection a person who is in the United States unlawfully is a federal crime.”
“You cannot take affirmative steps that are intended to help a person avoid being found by ICE,” the memo concludes.
Anne Williams-Isom, the deputy mayor in charge of the city’s migrant response, said the guidance was written in response to “stressful, challenging times,” and that city officials could continue to adjust it in the future.
“The mayor has said a hundred times, ‘We want children to come to school and I don’t want them to come to school terrified and feeling like they can’t go to after school,’” she said in an interview. “I want them to come to school and thrive. I want people to come to the hospital.”
Still, the president of the union that represents 9,000 security officers who work at city-owned and -contracted facilities, including shelters, said that the guidance was “contradictory and unclear” and would put its workers “in an impossible situation.”
“The guidance directs employees and contractors to allow ICE into facilities if they ‘feel’ fear,” Manny Pastreich, the president of the union, 32BJ S.E.I.U., said in a statement. “Our members should not be put in the position of having to make that decision.”
Recent guidance issued by the United Federation of Teachers stated that ICE agents could enter a school only with a judicial warrant and that the Education Department had “instructed principals that nonlocal law enforcement cannot enter their schools.”
ICE has continued to conduct immigration arrests across New York City since a highly publicized show of force on Jan. 28 led to the arrest of 39 people. Frank Tarentino, the special agent in charge of the New York office of the Drug Enforcement Administration, one of the federal agencies involved in the operations, said that at least 100 people had been arrested in New York City since the operations began.
Mr. Tarentino said the operations were “targeting the most violent” undocumented immigrants in the city, including those believed to be affiliated with gangs. But he said that there had also been “collateral” arrests of immigrants who happened to be present during those raids, though he said he did not know how many.
He said he was not aware of arrests at any schools or churches. Mr. Tarentino described the operations as “deliberate, methodical, surgical-type operations” that would typically avoid sensitive locations because those were places of mass gatherings where raids could “put the public at risk.”
Ana Ley contributed reporting.
