Latest news with #AlexaAviles
CBS News
24-07-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Sunset Park hit-and-run prompts renewed calls for Brooklyn street redesign
After two pedestrians were killed in a hit-and-run, traffic safety advocates are urging the city to act on long-promised safety upgrades along Brooklyn's Third Avenue corridor. Nearly two weeks ago, police say 80-year-old Kex Un Chen and 59-year-old Faqui Lin were struck and killed while crossing Third Avenue and 52nd Street. The driver has since been arrested and charged, but the crash has reignited demands from local leaders and residents to redesign the corridor entirely. Advocates who gathered Wednesday say they'll keep pressing until the city finally slows this street down. "We wait until someone dies. We wait until a tragedy. We wait to say, 'oh my gosh, how could this possibly have happened?' We let this happen time and time again," Brooklyn State Senator Andrew Gounardes said. "We want the city to actually commit real capital to make sure that it can do treatments that truly address the safety concerns while balancing the fact that we have an industrial business zone here," City Councilmember Alexa Avilés said. Advocates say this is not a new issue. According to activists, 80 New Yorkers have been killed or seriously injured along the two-mile stretch of Third Avenue since 2018. "We started talking about a plan in 2014 and it's now 2025. What is going on? We got word last fall that there was a pause, but an indefinite pause and I don't know what that means. There's been no conversation, no updates," Assemblymember Marcela Mitaynes said. One of the most dangerous intersections, according to residents, is at 60th Street, where there are three schools, an overpass with poor lighting and proximity to a highway ramp converge. "They speed off the ramp coming to this local street thinking it's a race," said Jerry Chan, Vice Chair of Public Safety for Brooklyn Community Board 7. "We can hear the endless din of really, really large trucks, all kinds of cars, treating this neighborhood street as a highway," said Alexa Sledge, Director of Communications at Transportation Alternatives. In response, City Hall issued a statement which reads: "The Adams administration is committed to enhancing safety and accessibility throughout the city so that all New Yorkers — whether they're walking, biking, or driving — can move through their neighborhoods safely. Prior to making any major changes to a corridor, we receive comprehensive input from community members and local businesses to ensure every voice is heard. The Department of Transportation is currently integrating public feedback into project planning to determine next steps." The roar of trucks and speeding cars along Brooklyn's Third Avenue corridor is a constant reminder of the dangers that lurk along the local street. For Jane Martin-Lavaud, it's deeply personal. "The traffic is a wee bit triggering," she told Brooklyn reporter Hannah Kliger. "When a traumatic event like this occurs, you feel very much isolated and betrayed by the universe." Martin-Lavaud, a member of Families for Safe Streets, wiped away tears while holding a photo of her daughter, 24-year-old daughter Leonora Lavaud. Twelve years ago, Leonora was killed by a driver in Gravesend. Since then, her mother dedicated herself to traffic safety advocacy. "Who wants to have police at the door? Who wants to get that phone call? Who wants to have to go and show up at the city morgue and identify their child in a body bag?" she said. Have a story idea or tip in Brooklyn? Email Hannah by CLICKING HERE.
The Independent
03-06-2025
- General
- The Independent
ICE wants an office inside NYC's notorious Rikers Island jail. A judge might end those hopes
A state judge in New York will continue to block Donald Trump 's administration from opening an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office inside Rikers Island jail, one of the largest and most notorious detention facilities in the country, plagued by decades of reports of widespread abuse and violence. New York City Mayor Eric Adams gave ICE permission to operate inside the jail earlier this year, drawing lawsuits from city officials accusing Adams of crafting a 'corrupt bargain' with the president to expand his anti-immigration agenda in exchange for dropping a criminal corruption case against the mayor. On Tuesday, New York Supreme Court Justice Mary Rosado extended her temporary restraining order as she considers a more permanent injunction to keep federal immigration authorities from entering the city-run jail. 'The argument that this is not part of a quid pro quo or there's no politics at play here is absurd,' New York City Council member Alexa Aviles, chair of the council's immigration committee, told reporters after Tuesday's hearing in Manhattan. 'We cannot trust this administration to follow the law,' she said. New York officials banned ICE from city jails in 2014 after the passage of so-called sanctuary laws intended to block the transfer of undocumented immigrants to ICE custody, where they are placed in deportation proceedings. But Adams — following his meetings with Trump border czar Tom Homan — granted ICE permission to return to the troubled facility with an executive order issued by one of his deputies. A subsequent lawsuit from the Democrat-controlled New York City Council called the order 'illegal, null, and void.' A coalition of civil rights and legal aid groups and public defenders along with New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams filed briefs supporting the lawsuit. The order from the Adams administration is in 'clear violation of New York City's sanctuary protections and it invites a new era of racial profiling, wrongful deportations, and constitutional violations,' according to Meghna Philip with the The Legal Aid Society. 'The Trump administration has shown it will use any pretext to carry out mass deportations — even in defiance of our Constitution and federal court rulings — and this executive order gives ICE direct access to New Yorkers in custody, their information, and their families,' she said in a statement. Last month, after a years-long court battle, a federal judge stripped New York City of its control over Rikers Island and ordered a third-party monitor to take over. That ruling — the culmination of roughly 14 years of litigation — followed years of reports detailing the conditions, abuse, violence and death inside the jail. At least 19 people died inside Rikers in 2022 — the highest number of deaths since 2013. At least five people have died inside the jail in 2025 so far. After years of public pressure, the jail is legally required to close by August 2027. That detention space — where more than 7,000 people are jailed — is set to be replaced with smaller borough-based jails. But the Adams administration is reportedly considering scrapping those plans altogether. Federal immigration officials maintained an office at Rikers in the years before the city's sanctuary policies, leading to 'countless violations of detainees' rights,' according to law professor Peter Markowitz, co-director of the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law. ICE had access to detailed information about anyone entering the jail with 'on-demand access' to interview them, he wrote in court documents. 'Detainees were often misinformed that they were being taken for legal visits, only to then be presented to plain-clothed ICE agents who would question them and attempt to extract legal admissions,' according to Markowitz. Immigration officers used the jail to 'surveil, intimidate, and conduct uncounseled interviews in an inherently coercive setting, allowing them to extract admissions about nationality and immigration status and then use those statements to justify detention and deportation,' he wrote. If ICE returns to the jail, Rikers will return to the 'widespread violation of detainees' constitutional rights and due process of law, albeit in an even more aggressive posture than during the first Trump administration,' according to Markowitz. The city's arrangement ostensibly only allows for ICE to launch criminal investigations, not for routine enforcement of largely civil federal immigration law. But civil rights groups and immigration attorneys fear that federal officers — empowered by Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to target alleged gang members — will bypass due process and summarily deport immigrants using only spurious evidence against them. 'The assertions that returning ICE to Rikers Island is necessary to advance criminal investigations of dangerous gangs reeks of pretext. I know of no specific instance where ICE's lack of physical presence at Rikers Island has stood as, or even been claimed as, an obstacle to a criminal investigation,' according to Markowitz. The Independent
