Latest news with #RikersIsland
The Independent
2 days ago
- 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
Globe and Mail
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
Harvey Weinstein's rape, sexual-assault trial set to wrap up with closing arguments
Harvey Weinstein's rape and sexual-assault trial is set to wrap up with closing arguments to the jury by prosecutors and defence lawyers on Tuesday in Manhattan, a year after a state appeals court overturned the former movie mogul's 2020 conviction. Weinstein, 73, is accused of raping an actor and assaulting two women in what prosecutors have called a pattern in which the onetime Hollywood kingmaker used his power and influence to lure in victims and then keep them silent. The Miramax studio co-founder has pleaded not guilty and has denied ever having non-consensual sex with anyone. Weinstein, suffering from a litany of health problems, was present throughout the trial in a wheelchair. Weinstein already will likely spend the rest of his life in prison due to a 16-year prison sentence for rape in California. Weinstein was convicted of rape by a jury in a previous trial in Manhattan in February 2020, but the New York Court of Appeals in April, 2024, threw out the conviction and ordered a new trial, citing errors by the trial judge. Weinstein had been serving a 23-year sentence in a prison in upstate Rome, New York, when the conviction was overturned. That conviction had been a milestone for the #MeToo movement, which encouraged women to come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct by powerful men. Weinstein has been held at New York City's Rikers Island jail since his conviction was overturned. He has had several health scares while being held at Rikers, and in September was rushed to a hospital for emergency heart surgery. Prosecutors with the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg have portrayed Weinstein as a serial predator who promised career advancement in Hollywood to women, only to then coax them into private settings where he attacked them. Weinstein's lawyer Arthur Aidala rejected that characterization during his opening statement to the jury, saying the Oscar-winning producer had 'mutually beneficial' relationships with his accusers, who ended up with auditions and other show business opportunities. Bragg's office originally accused Weinstein of sexually assaulting former production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006 and raping aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013, charges he was convicted of in the first trial. For the retrial, prosecutors added a new charge that Weinstein assaulted another woman in Manhattan in 2002. The woman, Kaja Sokola of Poland, testified that Weinstein assaulted her in a Manhattan hotel room. More than 100 women, including famous actresses, have accused Weinstein of misconduct. He has denied assaulting anyone or having non-consensual sex. Miramax studio produced many hit movies in its heyday, including Shakespeare in Love and Pulp Fiction. Weinstein's own eponymous film studio filed for bankruptcy in March, 2018, five months after the original sexual misconduct accusations became widely publicized.
Reuters
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Reuters
Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault trial to conclude with closing arguments
NEW YORK, June 3 (Reuters) - Harvey Weinstein's rape and sexual assault trial is set to wrap up with closing arguments to the jury by prosecutors and defense lawyers on Tuesday in Manhattan, a year after a state appeals court overturned the former movie mogul's 2020 conviction. Weinstein, 73, is accused of raping an actress and assaulting two women in what prosecutors have called a pattern in which the onetime Hollywood kingmaker used his power and influence to lure in victims and then keep them silent. The Miramax studio co-founder has pleaded not guilty and has denied ever having non-consensual sex with anyone. Weinstein, suffering from a litany of health problems, was present throughout the trial in a wheelchair. Weinstein already will likely spend the rest of his life in prison due to a 16-year prison sentence for rape in California. Weinstein was convicted of rape by a jury in a previous trial in Manhattan in February 2020, but the New York Court of Appeals in April 2024 threw out the conviction and ordered a new trial, citing errors by the trial judge. Weinstein had been serving a 23-year sentence in a prison in upstate Rome, New York, when the conviction was overturned. That conviction had been a milestone for the #MeToo movement, which encouraged women to come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct by powerful men. Weinstein has been held at New York City's Rikers Island jail since his conviction was overturned. He has had several health scares while being held at Rikers, and in September was rushed to a hospital for emergency heart surgery. Prosecutors with the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg have portrayed Weinstein as a serial predator who promised career advancement in Hollywood to women, only to then coax them into private settings where he attacked them. Weinstein's lawyer Arthur Aidala rejected that characterization during his opening statement to the jury, saying the Oscar-winning producer had "mutually beneficial" relationships with his accusers, who ended up with auditions and other show business opportunities. Bragg's office originally accused Weinstein of sexually assaulting former production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006 and raping aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013, charges he was convicted of in the first trial. For the retrial, prosecutors added a new charge that Weinstein assaulted another woman in Manhattan in 2002. The woman, Kaja Sokola of Poland, testified that Weinstein assaulted her in a Manhattan hotel room. More than 100 women, including famous actresses, have accused Weinstein of misconduct. He has denied assaulting anyone or having non-consensual sex. Miramax studio produced many hit movies in its heyday, including "Shakespeare in Love" and "Pulp Fiction." Weinstein's own eponymous film studio filed for bankruptcy in March 2018, five months after the original sexual misconduct accusations became widely publicized.
CBS News
18-05-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams on fed takeover of Rikers Island: "We've got to try something new"
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Deputy Mayor Fabien Levy sat down with CBS News New York's Marcia Kramer for this week's episode of "The Point." Jumaane Williams on Rikers Island This week, a federal judge appointed a remediation manager for Rikers Island. So will it make a difference in conditions there? "They didn't create this mess. I don't think they made it much better. My thing has been it is not working for anyone there. The people who work there, the corrections officers, certainly not the detainees who are dying at high rates. We've got to try something new," Williams said. "I am hoping that this is the thing that will get us where we need to go, which is a place where people can feel safer." Williams talked about the importance of changing the culture at Rikers. "You've got to remember that 80% or more of the folks who are there haven't been convicted of crime, so they're waiting for their trial," Williams said. "One of the things everybody agrees on, everyone, all sides of this, is a speedy trial is a problem. So I really wish we all can just get in a room and figure out how to get people tried. Either send them home, or send them upstate." Fabien Levy on the new city office to combat antisemitism Deputy Mayor Fabien Levy is the highest-ranking Jewish official in the Adams administration, so who better to talk about the mayor's decision to open an office to combat antisemitism. "Jewish New Yorkers make up about 10% of the city's population, but are sadly the target of about 62% of hate crimes, total hate crimes. That means that almost all the other hate crimes combined don't equal what Jewish New Yorkers have felt in the first quarter of this year," Levy said. Levy said there's been a spike since the Oct. 2024 Hamas attack on Israel there has been an exponential increase in hate crimes. Your Point: Are college degrees still worth it? Education officials including the head of the American Federation of Teachers, have begun talking about the value of teaching kids a trade instead of sending them college. Do New Yorkers agree? They're weighing in.
CBS News
13-05-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
NYC loses control of Rikers Island as judge appoints remediation manager to run jail complex
After years of litigation, a federal judge has appointed a remediation manager to run Rikers Island and report directly to her, taking control of the troubled complex away from New York City. Complaints about the sprawling jail complex have gone on for decades, but now it will be up to the feds to come up with a solution. "They want to do something else and they don't like what we're doing" Mayor Eric Adams said he had taken steps to reduce the violence and improve conditions, but insisted he had been hamstrung by the City Council and then-Mayor Bill de Blasio who passed a law calling for Rikers to close by 2027. The law also prevented the city from spending money to improve the dilapidated conditions. A July 2023 report documented dangerous health and safety conditions at the various jails – pictures of dirty toilets, wash basins, sinks and other personal hygiene facilities. "Because of the 2027 law that was passed, we cannot put money into capital improvements on Rikers," Adams said. "So when you look at the women's locker room, it's disgusting. When you look at some of the major improvements you need with the doors and the facilities, we can't do that." The appointment comes after more than nine years of a tug-of-war over improving conditions and after the judge held the city in contempt last November for what she called "a glacial pace of reform." "So if the federal judge made a determination that they want to do something else and they don't like what we're doing, it's a federal judge. We're going to follow the rules," Adams said. "I'm going to follow whatever rule she puts in place because she has the authority to do so." Appointment marks "critical turning point," advocates say The Legal Aid Society and a private law firm representing inmates called the judge's move a "historic decision." "This appointment," they said, in part, in a statement, "marks a critical turning point – an overdue acknowledgement that City leadership has proven unable to protect the safety and constitutional rights of incarcerated individuals." The correction officers' union released a statement saying, in part: "We are willing to work productively with whomever is ultimately appointed the Remediation Manager, while maintaining our fierce advocacy for the preservation of our members' employment rights and improving their working conditions ... The city's jails cannot operate without us and no matter what the new management of our jails looks like, the path towards a safer jail system begins with supporting the essential men and women who help run the jails every day." As for closing Rikers, construction of the four community-based jails that are supposed to replace Rikers are behind schedule, and they only hold about 4,500 inmates combined. There are 7,000 people on Rikers right now.
