U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered the Mamdani administration on Friday, Nov. 6, to comply with an ICE subpoena to hand-over the names and birth dates of shelter residents in the Bronx city-run migrant shelter who might be subject to deportation.
Judge Kaplan has given the city two weeks to comply with the plan, under which the city and ICE can submit a proposed plan to the court-appointed “special master” who will review the shelter records and oversee the transfer of data.
The migrant shelter, located at 825 East 141st Street and Bruckner Boulevard in Mott Haven is the city’s last emergency housing shelter that beds 2,200 homeless adult males. The shelter has been reduced from 1,670 residents to roughly 1,000 residents since February as the shelter begins closure.
Many residents are scheduled to relocate to long-term shelters across the city.
“The city has not shown that producing this list would be unduly burdensome,” Kaplan wrote in his ruling. “The court therefore has no choice but to compel the subpoena’s enforcement, as modified by the appointment and role of a special master.”
ICE originally demanded the names and records of all male residents, but Judge Kaplan’s ruling limited the scope to residents with “serious criminal histories” charged with murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, assault, grand larceny, burglary or assault of a law enforcement officer.
“We are reviewing that decision and evaluating all our legal options,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a press conference.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James said she is also evaluating the matter.
The city argued that ICE is attempting to “leverage the federal administrative subpoena power to circumvent and undermine the City’s sanctuary city laws,” suggesting the agency’s motive is “more political than investigatory,” according to Kaplan’s subpoena.
Kaplan disagreed with the argument, saying that nothing in the record suggested that ICE is attempting to identify migrants with serious criminal histories for any reason other than to enforce the immigration laws against them.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment from the Bronx Times.
Immigration advocates like The New York Immigration Coalition are calling for the verdict to be appealed.
What “ICE has been trying to do for some time now is continuously launch these horrible campaigns of mass deportation against our community members,” Murad Awawdeh, the president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition told Gothamist.
“ We believe that the city must appeal and that City Hall and Albany must act also on the simple principle of making sure they are also protecting everyone that’s in their care.”
Elected officials in the Bronx were outraged by the announcement of the verdict. Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson wrote on X, “HELL NO!”
The Mamdani administration is set to close the shelter by the end of the year.
