New stores are opening across the city at an impressive pace, many of them in locations now newly accessible to certain businesses because of Mayor Eric Adams’ “City of Yes” rezoning revamped archaic rules.

Construction of new multifamily buildings is also finally picking up, a year after the legislature and the governor finally agreed on a new tax break to spur residential construction amid the city’s severe housing crisis.

And the conversion of obsolete office buildings into much needed housing is surging, spurred by a tax break ed a year ago and the rezoning that greatly expanded the kind of buildings that could be converted.

“The trend is very simple. People are building,” said Carlo Scissura, president of the New York Building Congress. “Office-to-residential conversions will be one of the most successful programs to hit New York in many decades. You have a lot of older office buildings in great locations near transit and it makes sense to see them become residential buildings.”

The activity is a sign that policy changes sought by the Adams istration, real estate interests and pro-housing groups are paying off.

But it comes with a major asterisk. All of the new apartment construction projects expected to use the new 485-x development incentive are for buildings with fewer than 100 units — sidestepping a costly wage requirement for construction workers but also producing less housing than the sites could accommodate.

“The activity is all excellent and wonderful, but we are not seeing enough numbers to say we are making a demonstrable dent in the goal of adding 500,000 new housing units,” said Basha Gerhards, senior vice president of the Real Estate Board of New York.

At least the numbers are headed in the right direction.

The Department of City Planning will announce Tuesday that 500 vacant storefronts reopened in the last year that might otherwise have been shuttered permanently because of restrictive zoning rules that forbade reopening old storefronts in residential areas. (The city tracks store openings and vacancies through a database called Live XYZ.)

The fast-growing amusement sector, which includes arcades and mini golf courses, has taken advantage of the new flexibility.

For example, Activate Games signed a 175,000-square-foot lease at 24 Union Square East, where it will occupy part of the first floor and all of the second floor of a former furniture store at its first New York site. The Canadian company, with 40 locations worldwide, has pioneered a gaming business that combines physical activity with mind games that groups can play, and it could not have opened in Union Square without the zoning changes.

“It’s clear that we made an important change at the right moment,’’ said Dan Garodnick, director of the Department of City Planning and the driving force behind the City of Yes rezonings. “It was the right time to take a hard look at zoning rules that were stifling businesses. Early results are in, and they are quite good.”

Meanwhile, office-to-residential conversions are gaining momentum. Originally concentrated downtown because of rules that only allowed conversions for older buildings along with incentives for neighborhood recovery after 9/11, landlords are now targeting Midtown office buildings, including in Times Square.

City of Yes now allows the conversion of any office building before 1991 in an area that allows residential use and exempts the building from almost all property taxes from 25 to 35 years as long as it sets aside a quarter of the units at below market rents. Other city programs have made it easier as well.

REBNY originally estimated that conversions would produce 20 million square feet and 20,000 new apartments. It now believes the figure could reach 40 million square feet and 40,000 units.

The most well known is the revamp of the former Pfizer headquarters on East 42nd Street, where Metro Loft is going to create 1,600 new units in what is being hailed as the largest office conversion in the world.

A few blocks to the north, Rudin is working on the overhaul of two of its office buildings at 845 Third Ave. and 355 Lexington Ave., which are not very far from its headquarters at 345 Park Ave. filled with prestigious tenants like the financial giant Blackstone and the NFL.

“We saw that tenants wanted to come to 345 Park Avenue and a block or two away there was no demand for office space,” said Bill Rudin, co-executive chair of the firm.

The first conversion expected to come online next year is actually the most surprising: 5 Times Square, built by RXR in 2002 as the headquarters of the ing firm EY. The firm decided to relocate to a new building on the far West Side in 2017. When the pandemic hit, RXR was able to ink only one small lease for the building and found very little interest in corporate tenants for Times Square, whose vacancy rate is higher than other Midtown districts.

But the building had been built in a way that made residential conversion much easier than other office buildings, and with changes to the zoning rules, RXR determined it could do an overhaul for a relatively modest price tag of several million dollars. It will create 1,250 new apartments, a quarter of which will be below market rate, that target a younger demographic.

“There will be studios and one-bedrooms that appeal to young professionals coming to the city,” said Jeff Holmes, senior vice president. “And the reality is we have a 1.4% vacancy rate.”

Developers are again seeking permits for new multi-family buildings, which dried up after the controversial 421-a tax break lapsed in June 2022 and wasn’t replaced by 485-x until this January. The new incentive provides a 35- or 40-year exemption from property taxes, which are so high for apartment buildings that few are ever built without a tax incentive.

In the first three months of the year, builders filed for almost 7,000 new units in 123 buildings, a 65% increase from the last three months of the year.

Meanwhile, in the first five months of the year developers who have to file an expression of an interest in using 485-x have indicated they are interested in building 2,600 units using the abatement.

But all those buildings are for less than 100 units, avoiding a requirement that any new building in the city must pay a minimum $40 an hour construction wage to access the tax break.

The city takes an optimistic view of the results.

“With 118 buildings representing roughly 2,600 new homes already showing intent to use to program in just 10 months of operation, 485-x is proving to be the tax incentive we needed to keep producing more affordable housing,” Adams said in a statement.

But the REBNY report noted that the 7,000 new units filed for in the first quarter is only a little more than half the 12,500 units needed each quarter to meet the mayor’s goal of 500,000 new housing units over a decade.

Real estate insiders suggest 485-x will work for large buildings where a rezoning allows a major increase in square footage. Scissura of the Building Congress said he expected an effort next year to revise 485-x if new construction continues to be concentrated in smaller buildings.

“Everything is playing out as expected. The absence of the larger projects we need at scale to meet the city’s production goals was identified early on by REBNY as a likely outcome of the new program design,” said Gerhards of REBNY.

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As Gov. Kathy Hochul weighs which prisons to close this year amid declining incarceration rates and a corrections staffing crisis, advocates and formerly incarcerated people are calling for one of New York’s most infamous facilities — Attica — to shutter its gates for good.

The state budget finalized in May includes a plan to close up to three state prisons. The sites are expected to be announced by the end of the year. 

Hochul and other state officials haven’t disclosed which of the 42 potential sites are on the chopping block or detailed in any meaningful way how the locations will be selected. 

But advocates want to see Attica on the list, along with two other prisons near Syracuse: Marcy Correctional Facility and Mid-State Correctional Facility. 

They cite the long history of abuses at Attica and the beatdown deaths of Robert Brooks, 43, at Marcy on Dec. 9, 2024, and Messiah Nantwi, 22, at Mid-State on March 1. Multiple correction officers have been criminally charged with murdering Brooks and Nantwi by fatally kicking and punching them as well as trying to cover up what happened.

“That would send a message to the entire community that when these prison guards step out of line and take somebody’s life, the prison should be closed,” said Renny Smith, who spent 27 years behind bars and is now a member of the coalition of Incarcerated People’s Lives Matter, a nonprofit that advocates for people in prison. 

“That should be the policy, that should be the norm,” he added. “That’s one way to hold these prison guards in check.” 

State Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn), who chairs the Committee on Crime and Correction, agreed. 

“A prison where an incarcerated New Yorker can be tortured and killed by corrections staff, while other staff watched without intervening, is not a place where people can expect to be safe,” she told THE CITY. 

The push to shutter Attica comes more than five decades after the infamous 1971 prison uprising, where 43 people — mostly incarcerated men — were killed after state troopers stormed the facility. 

Despite decades of calls for reform, the maximum-security prison continues to be associated with allegations of brutality and inhumane conditions. Smith and other advocates argue that closing Attica would not only address that cycle of abuse but also serve as a powerful statement against the state’s punitive past.

“Attica is a prison notorious for systemic racism and especially prevalent violence,” Salazar said. 

The push for the closure of Attica isn’t unanimous. 

Attica is fully equipped with stationary surveillance cameras and has received significant capital improvements over the past several years. The Wyoming County lockup is also one of the largest prisons in the state with room for 2,253 people. 

Overall, New York’s state inmate population has decreased over the last two decades, from a high of over 72,649 in 1999 to 31,194 as of June 2, according to prison records. 

That drop — driven by criminal-justice reforms, changes in sentencing laws and a declining crime rate — has led to a major reduction in the number of state prison facilities throughout the state. Since 2009, the state has closed 32 prisons, saving hundreds of millions of dollars, according to budget records.

Many of the prisons closed were smaller facilities designed to house lower-level offenders. 

As for this year’s shutdowns, Hochul has noted correction officers will be allowed to transfer to other facilities. 

“When any prison is closed, there will be no job losses,” she told reporters in May. “I need every single person who is a corrections officer to transition either to an ading facility or to have consolidations.” 

The financial heartbeat of some upstate towns where the prison serves as the main source of employment is at stake. Hochul originally proposed clo to five prisons this year but that was pared back to three, likely due to pushback from upstate lawmakers, according to prison insiders. 

The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision last year closed Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Washington County and Sullivan Correctional Facility in Sullivan County. 

Another potential target for closure this year is Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, near the Canadian border. The maximum security facility is where two convicted murderers, Richard Matt and David Sweat, escaped in June 2015. 

Correction officers at the prison, which holds 2,959 people, also played a key role in the 22-day wildcat strike earlier this year, according to department insiders. 

Collins Correctional Facility in Erie County, where the strike began, is also a possible target, according to a media reports. 

Thomas Mailey, DOCCS chief spokesperson, said the department will “carefully review the operations” at each facility before coming up with a possible list for closures.

The review includes: physical infrastructure, program offerings, security levels, specialized medical and mental health services, according to Mailey. It also takes into consideration “the proximity of other facilities in the area to minimize the impact to staff, potential re-use options and areas of the state where prior closures have occurred in order to minimize the impact to communities,” he added. 

But the process is done entirely behind the scenes without any input from the public. 

“It’s concerning that we all know so little about the process by which (the state prison system) is deciding to close facilities,” said Antony Gemmell, a Legal Aid Society supervising attorney in the Prisoner Rights Project. 

“It makes sense that the system would shrink,” he added. “That should be a trend, and to the extent that it is a trend, there does need to be a greater level of transparency.”

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Mayoral candidate and State Senator Jessica Ramos ed FAQ NYC in March to lament that “there is, I think, a little bit of amnesia happening. I do think the press could do a better job of highlighting the myriad of ways in which Andrew Cuomo has created the mess that he now claims he is somehow going to fix. But I can’t forget, right? My district was the epicenter of the epicenter. To me, it’s not only about, of course, all those grandparents who died in the nursing homes and him lying about it. I him taking away Medicare funding from our hospitals in the middle of the pandemic.”

Now, Ramos is endorsing Cuomo, and hosts Christina Greer, Katie Honan and Harry Siegel discuss her surprise turn and much more ahead of Thursday’s Democratic mayoral debate, where Katie will be one of the s. 

Early voting starts this Saturday, and you can go here to find your early voting and election day sites (they’re often not the same) and also see exactly what will be on your ballot. If you need to catch up, The City’s Meet Your Mayor quiz lets you see which candidate’s views line up most closely with yours and you can hear directly from all the leading Democratic candidates except Andrew Cuomo, who’s declined to come on since getting in the race, at FAQ NYC.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

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This story was originally published by Documented.

The day of his final immigration hearing, N., who asked Documented to use only his first initial due to fear of retaliation, was ecstatic. He ed the virtual session via a private link sent by his lawyer, dressed in a button-down shirt to look presentable for what seemed to resemble a normal court. 

On screen, the judge, wearing a black gown and sitting next to an American flag, told him his deportation would be pardoned — and that he would be eligible to apply for a green card. 

N. described his emotions at that moment: “It makes you happy because it’s been a while since you have seen your family. And you become illusioned that the moment [of legalization] will arrive and that you will hug them.”

But the pardon he received that day was fake, part of an intricate scheme by a group of scammers who had N. attend fake immigration court hearings and ICE check-ins for six long months. 

The 31-year-old asylum seeker’s story is part of a broader trend of immigrants falling victim to elaborate scams on social media platforms while seeking legal assistance to avoid deportation under President Trump’s most recent crackdown. In New York City alone, immigration-related scams rose by 27% last year, according to the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), though advocates and lawmakers say the real number is likely much higher due to language barriers and underreporting. 

Beyond the financial toll, the scams can have devastating legal consequences for the victims. The fake lawyer had instructed N. to avoid his in-person hearing with the courts, as it would pose the risk of detention and told him that the online sessions they had scheduled would be safer. Missing your court hearing may result in being ordered deported “in absentia.”As a result, N. was ordered deported after missing his real court hearing.

N., who is from Honduras, was not completely unfamiliar with how the immigration courts worked. In fact, he had attended multiple virtual hearings when he was in detention after he arrived in the U.S. from Honduras in May 2021. He was released on bond in June 2021and since then split his time living between New York and Georgia. In the summer of 2024, with the prospect of a second Trump presidency looming, he began looking for an affordable lawyer online, hoping to prevent a future deportation. 

He came across a group of alleged immigration lawyers on Facebook (we cannot divulge the name as there is a possible lawsuit), who asked him to them via WhatsApp. At the beginning, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary: they took his information, a copy of his port and other documents and did an intake, including collecting his Alien number, an identifier the Department of  Homeland Security assigns to immigrants involved in the U.S. immigration system. 

They told him the total cost of representation would be $5,000, which he could pay in installments.

Between August and December 2024, N. attended what he thought were three different hearings online. He paid $3,500 for services including legal representation and filing form I-485, to apply for permanent residency with USCIS. In the first two meetings, N. said he met with an alleged officer from USCIS where he was asked about his job, if he had any family in the U.S., and if he had any tattoos. The man wore a navy blue police-officer outfit, with the DHS emblems on the shoulders. Based on screenshots shared with Documented, the man sat in front of boxes labeled “denied,” “deported,” and had a U.S. flag in the frame. In one of them, a framed photo of Biden can be seen.

In the third meeting, a judge was present alongside N.’s lawyer. “It’s like a real thing. The judge introduces himself, he asks for my name, they ask the lawyer’s name and her license number. And then they start to issue the sentences,” N. explained. He said that during his last court hearing, he was told that his order of deportation had been pardoned and that he had to pay $900 to proceed with the next step. “I felt really happy, and I was in heaven,” N. said. 

He was told by the lawyer he had hired to pay $99 per page for a 22-page document, for a total amount of $2,178.  N. could not afford that on his salary working in construction, where he averaged $400 a week. He was told to pay within seven days to avoid losing the opportunity to adjust his status, he said. “The lawyer would send me messages to see if I had the money,” N. recalled. “It was for some authentication of papers at the consulate,” he said. 

‘Like an attorney’ 3h6y13

N. reached out to Envision Freedom Fund— an organization assisting immigrants across the five boroughs, which had also helped him in the past— and got in touch with Rosa Santana, the executive director. “She asked me for more details and then when I told her that they are charging me $99 per page, she got concerned and told me, ‘No, this is a scam. Don’t send any more money,’” N. said. 

For Santana, the tactic that N. fell for is one she had come across from different clients, who often, like N., are looking for affordable or free legal assistance on social media platforms. Once they come across a profile, the scam artists move the conversation to WhatsApp or texting, she said.

In 2024, according to the DCWP, the number of immigration fraud cases increased from 36 in 2023 to 46 in 2024. While the number may not be significant in comparison to the more than 25,000 complaints the agency received, the figure of victims is anticipated to be higher as many immigrants do not report these incidents, Michael Lanza, a spokesperson for the DCWP, told Documented. 

“Earlier this year, DCWP completed a sweep of nearly 500 businesses suspected of providing immigration assistance services and issued more than 60 summonses,” Lanza said. 

Alpha A. Diallo, Co-Founder & Executive Director of the Pan-African Community Development Initiative, told Documented that he has also seen of the African immigrant community also impacted by scammers who tell them that they are immigration lawyers. “When people are desperate, oftentimes, there are people waiting to take advantage of the situation which is what’s been happening,” Diallo said. 

He explained that immigrants tend to share the information of the fake lawyers that they are using with one another, without ing the credentials, thinking they are real.  “People think, if I pay somebody money, they will take care of it,” Diallo emphasized. 

At an April 15 City Council meeting, nonprofits and community shared similar stories about falling victim to immigration fraud. Like N., Christian— one of the victims who testified and did not share their last name—  claimed to have also encountered a fake immigration lawyer on Facebook, who instructed Christian how to make payments and then asked him to dress up for their court session online. 

“My attorney appeared virtually, and I the judge wearing a black robe […] And, the judge who spoke Spanish to me asked me, and told me that I had eight days to pay a little over $5,000,” Christian testified in Spanish. 

Alexa Avíles, chair of the immigration committee, said during the hearing that “unscrupulous actors prey upon this desperation, and immigrants can find themselves overcharged, lied to, and in some instances have their immigration cases irreparably damaged by fraudulent providers.” She added that Trump’s immigration agenda has isolated immigrants from reaching out to organizations or local agencies, and made them more vulnerable to these kinds of frauds. 

The DCWP encouraged immigrants to report these scams. “We take our role in protecting consumers – regardless of immigration status – seriously,” Lanza said.

Ordered deported 65484r

Since 2021, N. had been fighting a defensive asylum case at the courts. But after the alleged Facebook lawyer advised him to avoid attending his court hearing in person, he agreed, thinking the lawyer was looking out for him.  

The scheme, to N., seemed real and he did not question the veracity of the hearings. When he was told that he would be eligible for a green card, he did not want to get his hopes up, so he did not share the news with anyone, including his family.  

“I kept it [the immigration proceedings] reserved, just to myself. Because sometimes it could be successful and sometimes it could not,” N. said. He added that he recommended the fake lawyer to some of his friends who were also seeking asylum with the courts. 

When he found out that he had fallen for an immigration scam, he became anxious and stressed. “I had something like insomnia, and I felt guilt towards myself,” N. explained. But that disappointment was not the worst part. 

In his real case with the courts, the judge had ordered him deported in absentia, which automatically puts him in deportation proceedings. His new attorney is filing a motion to reopen on his behalf. 

“I would tell people to look for information with people that know more about how the immigration system works. Because sometimes we end up getting confused and end up with a noose around our neck,” N. said.

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Under New York City laws that aim to curb the potential for or appearance of pay-to-play corruption, nobody on the city’s official list of companies and individuals doing, or even seeking, business with the city can give more than $400 to a citywide candidate in any election cycle.

But there’s another option: so-called independent expenditure committees, New York’s version of super PACS, that allow deep-pocketed players to spend unlimited amounts of money backing one candidate. And this election cycle, the overwhelming beneficiary of such spending has been former Gov. Andrew Cuomo — and those seeking to influence the vote in his favor. 

Case in point: donor Scott Rechler, chairman and CEO of RXR Realty, a major player in New York City’s ultra-competitive real estate market.

Rechler and his company are on the “doing business” list for a host of reasons, including his firm’s pending request for a zoning change to turn a massive warehouse complex located on Hall Street in an industrial Brooklyn neighborhood into a mixed-use residential building. The project is opposed by Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.

On March 13, Rechler wrote a $2,100 check to Cuomo’s campaign. The campaign promptly refunded him $1,700, bringing his donation in line with the $400 limit on “doing business” donors. Rechler had landed on the list two months earlier regarding the Hall Street project.

But Rechler wasn’t finished. The very next day he wrote a much more impressive check of $250,000 to Fix the City, an independent expenditure committee that is aggressively ing Cuomo’s bid for City Hall.

Rechler did not immediately respond to THE CITY’s questions about whether anyone involved in Cuomo’s campaign had mentioned the existence of Fix The City to him before he made his six-figure donation. 

On Monday after publication, a spokesperson for RXR responded to THE CITY’s questions about the timing of Rechler’s two donations, stating, “No, the Cuomo campaign did not refer Scott Rechler to the IE (Fix The City), nor has he talked to the campaign about the IE.”

And Rechler wasn’t the only double donor to Cuomo and Fix The City. Alex Arker is an owner of the Arker Companies, a developer that has for years obtained millions of dollars in city and state financing to build affordable housing across the city. More recently, Arker Companies was chosen by NYCHA to upgrade and then run three public housing developments under the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program. As a result, Arker and his firm are on the “doing business” list.

On April 22, Alex Arker wrote a $400 check to the Cuomo campaign, listing himself as “self employed” in the occupation of “real estate.” 

Arker also owns a company called Progressive Management of New York and a limited liability corporation called Chateau GC LLC. On April 23, the day after Arker wrote his $400 check to the Cuomo campaign, Progressive and Chateau each wrote $25,000 checks to Fix The City. Arker did not respond to THE CITY’s inquiry about the timing of these donations.

Campaigns are strictly prohibited from encouraging their donors to also give to independent spending committees that their candidate. There’s no evidence that Cuomo’s campaign violated that rule, and these well-timed double donations could be purely coincidental.

But the Cuomo campaign and Fix The City have already been accused of improper coordination on the spending side. 

The city Campaign Finance Board made such an accusation last month when it withheld nearly $1.3 million in public matching funds from Cuomo’s campaign, finding that a Fix the City ad plugging Cuomo’s candidacy was nearly identical to language on the campaign’s official website.

Campaigns and independent expenditure committees can discuss the logistics of a candidate’s appearance at an event, as long as it’s not a fundraiser for either party. They can discuss the candidate’s endorsement process. And they can request, obtain or republish a candidate’s photo, bio, press releases and position papers that are already available to the public.

But independent spenders like Fix The City are not allowed to coordinate their efforts with the campaigns of the candidates they .

Asked by THE CITY about any communications between the donors and any representative of the campaign regarding the existence of and how to donate to Fix The City, campaign spokesman Rich Azzopardi stated, “We have no insight into what Fix The City does, and I refer questions to them.”

In response to questions about its protocol regarding communications with the Cuomo campaign, Angelo Genova, counsel for Fix The City said the committee “complies with all relevant Campaign Finance Board rules and encourages and expects our donors and vendors to strictly comply with the no coordination and other rules of the CFB. From its inception, Fix the City has retained counsel and fiscal professionals to ensure compliance on a daily basis.” 

$2.7 Million From ‘Doing Business’ 3f6w15

Even short of coordination, the vast sums of money pouring in to Cuomo’s bid from people with business interests before the city inevitably raises questions about his istration’s fairness, should Cuomo become mayor. In addition to Fix The City, a landlord group, the New York Apartment Association, last week announced the formation of an independent expenditure committee called Housing For All, promising to spend $2.5 million to the former governor’s mayoral bid.

In fact, THE CITY found, 24 entities who are currently on the “doing business” list wrote checks to Fix The City ranging from $5,000 to $1 million, with most hovering in the $150,000 to $250,000 range. The “doing business” checks to Fix The City came to nearly $2.7 million.

They include corporations such as DoorDash ($1 million), Lyft ($25,000), Charter Communications ($125,000) and major real estate developers The Durst Organization ($100,000) and Two Trees Management ($250,000) — entities that are strictly prohibited from giving any amount to campaigns.

As for the individuals who gave, each would be restricted to only $400 if they gave directly to Cuomo’s campaign. In fact three donors on the “doing business list” did just that: Rechler, Barry Gosin of the real estate broker Newmark and Jeffrey Gural, chairman of GFP Real Estate. Gosin and Gural also each gave Fix The City $25,000.

So what are the motivations of these donors?

THE CITY found a range of interests by Fix The City donors pursuing favorable treatment from City Hall: Developers seeking long-term contracts to upgrade and run public housing developments (The Douglaston Group, Progressive Management of New York, and The Related Companies). A food delivery app (DoorDash) lobbying to avoid paying sick leave to gig drivers. An app (Lyft, which works with Citibike) concerned about micro-mobility device regulation. A communication firm (Charter Communications) fighting a bill that would require firms receiving government payments for economic development to pay prevailing wages.

Other entities are already receiving millions of dollars in city work and would likely want that to continue: America Works, a firm providing workers for city agencies (CEO Lee Bowes gave Fix The City $5,000); Jenner & Block, a law firm hired as an independent monitor of NYCHA (attorney Jeremy Creelan gave $10,000) and Northwell Health, a hospital network that does millions of dollars in lab testing for the city health department. Northwell’s Michael Dowling gave $10,000 to Fix the City.

Then there’s the case of Peter Fine, a veteran developer who wrote a $250,000 check to Fix The City on April 1, listing Atlantic Development Group as his employer. He’s been on the city’s “doing business” list since 2008 for Atlantic, which over the years netted millions of dollars in low interest loans and tax credits from the city to build affordable housing, mostly in the Bronx.

Fine was temporarily barred from participating in city-funded housing programs a few years back after an investigation revealed he’d recommended an architect he worked with to then-Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion to do work on Carrion’s City Island home. At the time Fine was seeking Carrion’s backing for a big Bronx development he was planning.

Carrion did not pay the architect until two years after the work was complete and only after he was confronted by a reporter. He wound up paying a $10,000 fine for violating city ethics rules, and one of Fine’s companies pleaded guilty to criminal tax fraud and filing false documents.

More recently Fine hired a lobbyist to handle various “real estate” matters involving city agencies on behalf of another of his companies, Bolivar Development, including pressing HPD on unspecified approvals and subsidies for various projects.

To date all of these donors have raised  $10.8 million for Fix The City, predominantly from deep pocket donors. In fact an analysis by THE CITY found some of the most powerful interests in New York dominated the roster, with 28.4% coming from real estate industry, 22.3% from Finance, 9.4% from ride share and delivery apps, 9% from entertainment interests, and 6.2% from unions — including the powerful carpenters union that endorsed his candidacy in March. 

To date Fix The City has spent $5.6 million in of Cuomo’s City Hall bid and has more recently launched negative ads against his main rival Zohran Mamdani. That includes $1.29 million to air a video ad that included text the CFB found mirrored text that existed on an obscure page within the Cuomo campaign’s website.

During its May 30th meeting, Board Member Richard Davis stated that based on the findings of the board’s investigation “thus far, it continues to find a reason to believe that the expenditure was not independent of the Cuomo campaign.” The investigation, Davis added, is continuing.

The campaign’s spokesperson, Azzopardi, has said the campaign is contesting the board’s finding, insisting that there was no coordination with Fix The City, which was organized by Steve Cohen, Cuomo’s chief of staff when he was governor.

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Climate change promises to reshape the city, yet there was no mention of it at the first official Democratic mayoral debate. Still, it looms over the candidates.

With affordability, public safety and housing taking center stage, climate change so far has been left out as a top issue, beyond a few dedicated mayoral forums and endorsements from local environmental groups. Some candidates have proposed new ideas, like community-level resilience hubs, and some have said they want to double-down on work already happening, such as expanding the urban canopy.

Whoever is mayor next year will face considerable challenges in a city poised to face worsened flooding and longer heat waves that threaten property, health and lives. The mayor must continue rebuilding from past storms like Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Ida while preparing the city for whatever may come next. They must contend with rampant inequality that leaves many of the city’s poorest residents the most vulnerable to climate change effects. And they can no longer rely on the certainty of federal funding, given President Donald Trump’s promises to cut it.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg showcased the sweeping influence a mayor can have in 2007 when he released an ambitious citywide sustainability agenda known as PlaNYC. Mayors since have updated the plan as they continue unfinished business, move toward legally obligated carbon-reduction targets and establish their own green goals. 

The mayor can throw their weight behind public policies, direct budget dollars towards specific investments and capital projects, and convene agencies to advance all sorts of green projects — including funding lush parks, planning for disasters, making buildings more energy-efficient, deploying electric vehicle chargers, installing rain-absorbing measures to prevent flooding and using the city’s purchasing power to spur market solutions.

“When you have a vision — and you can bring all the agencies together around this vision and move together with climate and equity right in the center of all the planning and the implementation — there’s a lot of power there as the mayor of New York City,” said Victoria Cerullo, who formerly advanced sustainability agendas under Bloomberg and Mayor Eric Adams. “There’s also a power in demonstrating how this can be done that sets a model for other cities as well.”

Four of the leading Democratic contenders — Comptroller Brad Lander, Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, former Comptroller Scott Stringer and Sen. Zellnor Myrie — have released policy proposals specifically related to climate and sustainability. 

Lander’s climate plan to “future-proof New York” includes scaling up solar installations across the city while creating jobs, deploying battery storage, upgrading parks, planting trees, expanding beach and pool access and electrifying buses, among several other actions.

“It’s time to get ready for the climate crisis, and you have to do it when the sun is shining, not just when the flash flood is hitting,” Lander said in April.

Mamdani’s policy plan, Green Schools for a Healthier New York, proposes renovating 500 public schools with rooftop solar and HVAC upgrades, building 500 green schoolyards and making 50 schools into resilience hubs where locals can get help or shelter during emergencies.

“Whether we’re talking about oysters or we’re talking about bioswales there are a lot of ways that our city can wake up to the reality of the climate crisis as opposed to pretending to be shocked every few years when it actually occurs,” Mamdani said in March.

Stringer’s five-point GREEN NYC plan, which lays out actions to combat deadly extreme heat, hunger and asthma at the community level, focusing on workforce development opportunities and creating neighborhood hubs for emergencies, food access and healthcare, among other aspects. 

”We have to get to a lot of the proposed resiliency projects that are on the drawing boards now,”  Stringer said in May. “The first priority I would do as mayor is come up with an emergency management plan and resiliency plan that would be aligned, not just for our economy, but also for the safety of New Yorkers.”

Myrie, as part of his Black Agenda, emphasizes investing in flooding solutions and sewer upgrades in specific flood-prone communities and expanding job training in industries related to clean energy and climate resilience. Myrie has criticized “every level of government” for falling short of addressing the climate crisis.

In public events and statements, some of the other candidates have weighed in on their climate plans. Most of them said they want to allocate more funding to the Parks Department, invest in flood protection and protect wetlands.

Council Speaker Adrienne Adams denounced cuts to FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, that could hurt New York City.

“This is where those boxing gloves come on to fight Donald Trump and to fight this istration that is creating so much destruction and chaos,” she said.

Former Assemblymember Michael Blake proposed ending “outdated tax exemptions” — pointing to Madison Square Garden — and redirecting the money to fund climate infrastructure.

Climate Champion or ‘Criminal’?  2f1s43

Some environmental groups have thrown their weight behind contenders to help guide climate-concerned voters at the ballot box. 

The New York League of Conservation Voters in May endorsed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Lander as its top two picks for mayor.

“Cuomo and Lander really rose above the rest because they really delivered — not just talked about it, but they really delivered on climate change and the environment,” said Julie Tighe, president of NYLCV. 

She pointed to Cuomo’s investments in clean air, clean water and parks and his 2019 g of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which requires the state to reduce planet-warming emissions and shift away from fossil fuels, touching on nearly every sector of the economy.

Tighe also praised Lander for pushing through bills to ban plastic bags and restrict styrofoam use during his time in City Council, and divesting pension funds from fossil fuels as Comptroller.

But NYLCV’s choices were not without controversy. On the same day the group made its endorsement, over a dozen progressive, climate and transit advocacy groups — including the New York Working Families Party, Food and Water Action and the Sunrise Movement — gathered in McGolrick Park in Greenpoint to criticize Cuomo’s record and denounce him as a “climate criminal.” 

“The hard-won climate progress in New York didn’t come from Albany — it came from us, the people. It did not come from Andrew Cuomo. It came from years, brutal years, of organizing by families, tenants and frontline communities,” said Adèrínsolà Babawale, an activist with No North Brooklyn Pipeline, which opposes fossil fuel expansion. “Andrew Cuomo signed climate laws because we forced him to, not because he cared, not because he led every step of the way.”

The Sunrise Movement’s local and national chapters both endorsed Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, and the Working Families Party ranked Mamdani first, with Lander following.

In a statement, Cuomo spokesperson Esther Jensen touted the former governor’s track record of creating “more than 150,000 clean energy jobs” and g the CLA into law.

“While his opponents make empty promises, it’s Cuomo who has the track record of real results and actually delivered,” she said.

Cuomo’s platform does not include extensive policies related to climate change, though his campaign website mentions improving the curbside composting program. Diverting food scraps and yard waste from landfills avoids methane emissions.

2030 on the Horizon  69202z

One looming policy that the mayor next year could influence is Local Law 97, the citywide law signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio that limits how much carbon large buildings can spew and fines property owners that don’t comply. Buildings are the city’s top source of greenhouse gas emissions, and owners must make physical changes to their buildings to comply with the law’s stricter limits in 2030 and 2050, sometimes at high upfront costs. 

In May, Cuomo met with leaders of the co-ops and condo buildings, including the President’s Co-op and Condo Council, a group that sued the city to block the law from taking effect (the lawsuit was dismissed). The group has warned their buildings will face financial ruin if they must invest in upgrades to comply with the law or pay the fines for noncompliance. A spokesperson for Cuomo said he’d “work with state and local stakeholders to solve this issue without compromising our climate goal,” but did not give specifics.

Nearly all candidates have noted that the city should provide more financial and technical assistance to property owners looking to comply. Only one, former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson, indicated the law should be suspended.

Lander said the city should better leverage existing tax credits and funding mechanisms to help owners. He also advocated for limiting renewable energy credits — which property owners can purchase to green projects and comply with the law without making physical changes to their properties — to 30%. 

Stringer proposed doing away with allowing owners to buy renewable energy credits entirely.

Whatever the next mayor decides, other cities will take notice, according to Kate Johnson, regional director for North America at C40, a network of almost 100 mayors around the world focused on confronting the climate crisis.

“New York was one of the very first cities to really tackle greenhouse gas emissions and energy use in existing buildings. For many of our cities, it’s the number one source of climate pollution the cities have control over,” Johnson said. “New York City was a leader in that: to build the capacity and show other cities how to move forward.”

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U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement refused entry to two of Congress who attempted to visit the detention area inside a Manhattan federal building on Sunday afternoon, as concerns grow about the conditions there amid an unprecedented surge of aggressive arrests of immigrants by the Trump istration.

Reps. Nydia Velazquez (D-Brooklyn/Queens) and Adriano Espaillat (Manhattan/The Bronx) were allowed to enter 26 Federal Plaza Sunday afternoon. After they waited an hour in the lobby for permission to go the 10th floor, where they had reason to believe detained people detained are being held, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations New York City Acting Field Office Director Judith Almodovar told the lawmakers they could not gain entry.

Dozens of people were arrested and held by ICE in recent weeks after routine immigration court appearances in the building or at ICE check-ins. of Congress and their staffers are supposed to be able to enter federal buildings unannounced for the purposes of federal oversight, according to first laid out in a 2020 spending bill and still in effect. 

“We were denied that right today. We will continue to come back. We will continue to ask for access to the 10th floor. We deserve to know what’s going on in the 10th floor,” Espaillat said, speaking to a crowd of reporters gathered outside following the attempted visit.

“This is not Russia. This is the United States of America where we have three branches of government. And we as of Congress have the unique constitutional responsibility to exercise oversight in a place like this,” added Rep. Velazquez. “What is it that they’re hiding?”

Marie Ferguson, a spokesperson for ICE, didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Rumors have been spreading among attorneys, family and activists in touch with people transferred out of 26 Federal Plaza about vastly overcrowded, unsanitary and hot cells. Similar concerns have been reported nationwide with more  than 51,000 people in ICE detention as of June 1 — a 31% spike from Jan. 1. 

When ICE began detaining people after their court proceedings in Manhattan last month, people were swiftly transferred outside of Manhattan and typically were able to call loved ones within 24 hours. But as the number of arrests surged, several families and lawyers described not having heard from their loved ones in days and the ICE online detainee locator system now shows a growing number of people who have yet to leave 26 Federal Plaza. 

On Saturday, a man named Nelson tried to visit his friend Mayra, who had been detained at an ICE check-in earlier in the week. ICE’s public records show he is still being held at 26 Federal Plaza, but the guards told him visits were not allowed.

Speaking to a gaggle of reporters that afternoon, Nelson held up a picture of Mayra, saying she had an active asylum case as well as a work permit, and was undergoing treatment for cancer. When Mayra was arrested, Nelson said, her 5-year-old daughter was left in school without anyone to pick her up.

“They broke her family for no reason,” Nelson said. “For what, to make Trump laugh? They’re going to put everyone in United States in jail? What’s going on here? This is not America.”

‘No Say in This at All’ 4f2l6u

The congressional visit Sunday was tame compared to the visit by lawmakers last month to a newly opened detention facility in Newark called Delaney Hall, where Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested. Rep. U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver, who was also in the group, is now facing federal assault charges in an exceedingly rare case of criminal prosecution for a member of Congress not related to corruption or fraud.

Sunday’s attempted Manhattan visit by the lawmakers followed a day-long standoff outside 26 Federal Plaza, where a small group of protesters made varying attempts to block vehicles, thought to be transporting detainees, from leaving the building.

At one point as a van tried to exit the garage at around 1:30 p.m., a row of protesters linked arms, blocking the exit. A row of federal agents in tactical gear tried to move them out of the way, but eventually they retreated, and the van returned down into the garage. 

Soon after the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group arrived, forcing protesters back onto an adjacent sidewalk with barricades and later using pepper spray on some of them. 

Over the course of the afternoon the NYPD arrested 22 people, a spokesperson said, while thinning out the crowd enough to allow federal vehicles to come and go freely throughout the afternoon.

The few dozen people in Manhattan paled in comparison to the large-scale protests that erupted in Los Angeles on Friday as camouflaged-garbed federal agents attempted a series of workplace raids. 

On Friday, after Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass expressed her objections to the raids, Stephen Miller, the key advisor to Trump’s mass deportation agenda, replied: “You have no say in this at all. Federal law is supreme and federal law will be enforced.”  

On Saturday, Trump said he was deploying 2,000 of the National Guard to tamp down on the protests, which he blamed on Democratic local leadership, while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted Sunday that Marines were prepared to police the American city if need be.

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Last winter, Virginia tearfully relayed an incident from the previous holiday season, when she and other workers at a Cypress Hills sweatshop waited for hours to receive their promised back pay after confronting the owners of the tobacco-processing business. 

Virginia, who like other workers who spoke with THE CITY asked that her real name not be published, worked 13-hour days, six days a week in a cramped unventilated shop for HotHead Grabba, a brand of ground tobacco sold in bodegas and smoke shops. 

She said the workers earned less than the hourly minimum wage and no overtime — when even they got paid at all.

She recalled how there were no gifts for their kids that Christmas: the promised money never arrived.

But on Wednesday, Virginia shed tears of joy when she learned that HotHead Grabba and three of its operators were charged with a slew of crimes that include stealing more than $310,000 in pay in a 74-count indictment unveiled by Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.

“My God, what a relief!” Virginia cried out in Spanish. “Finally, finally, there is justice, thank you God.”

“I never thought I’d see the day,” she added. “Our struggle was not in vain.”

The three defendants — Hunter Segree, Isayed Rojas and Joshua Howard — all pleaded not guilty at their arraignment Wednesday before Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Danny Chun.

Virginia and other whistleblowers were aided by the Brooklyn-based Workers Justice Project, which learned of the sweatshop last year and worked quickly to help the sweatshop workers — many of them middle-aged mothers — gather evidence before filing formal complaints with federal and local labor authorities.

WJP has helped nearly 50 people submit wage theft complaints to the state Department of Labor and the federal Occupational Safety & Health istration. 

“This is a testament that it is possible to seek justice, it is possible to use the system to ensure that abusive employers are held able,” said Ligia Guallpa, the executive director of WJP. “And we’re proud of that.”

Workers who spoke with THE CITY said they were shocked and overjoyed by news of the criminal charges.

Among them were Ana, who worked at the Chestnut Street sweatshop from August to October of 2023. She told THE CITY Wednesday that she and fellow workers toiled for 13-hour days, six to seven times a week — yet she collected only $500 in pay.

She said she is owed about $7,000 in unpaid minimum wages and overtime.

“They were completely shameless, they were completely without shame,” she said of her former bosses. “They are the biggest liars I have met in my entire life.”

As outlined in the indictment and in THE CITY’s reporting, workers were bound by a 15-lb. daily quota and told they would be paid $7 per pound of tobacco stripped — compensation that amounted to less than half of New York’s hourly minimum wage, due to the time-consuming nature of the job. 

Virginia and Ana, like other workers, were unfamiliar with New York labor laws and minimum wage requirements. They said they knew they were getting ripped off on pay, but had no idea how much they were actually owed until they met with WJP to submit their complaints.

The Chestnut Street workers were also aided in their efforts by Rep. Nydia Velázquez, who represents the Brooklyn district where the sweatshop was located and served as a liaison between WJP and the federal agencies. In a statement, she praised WJP “for sounding the alarm and to the Brooklyn DA for holding these individuals able.”

“What happened at HotHead Grabba is a disgrace. These women were taken advantage of because they were immigrants and because their employers thought they could get away with it,”  Velázquez added. “I hope this case sends a clear message that exploiting immigrant workers will not be tolerated in our city.”

Virginia and Ana have continued to rebuild their lives since quitting their HotHead Grabba jobs; they both now work as industrial cleaners. Virginia is also aiming to enroll in training to become a home health aide. They said they’re still fearful of their former bosses — who were all released Wednesday without bail — and of the Trump istration’s crackdown on immigrants.

In spite of the risks, Virginia said she urges other workers in similar positions not to let fear hold them back from fighting for their rights.

“I always tell people, and I’ll say it again: it’s never too late to raise our voice. We are not just immigrants, we are hard-working people and we have rights,” she said. “We cannot stay quiet, we have to fight for our rights. If we stay quiet, that’s when people take advantage of us.”

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The charter review commission convened by the City Council will recommend tightened oversight of city government leases, following reports that an appointee of Mayor Eric Adams steered a lease to the billionaire owner of a Wall Street office building who’d donated generously to the mayor’s legal defense fund.

The commission is set to release its preliminary recommendations for a wide variety of reforms to the city charter on Friday. In December the Council set up a charter review board, known as the Commission to Strengthen Local Democracy. In response, Adams created his own commission, which has recommended changes to the charter that would curb the Council’s powers over development.

The process by which city government spends billions of dollars contracting with private landlords to lease office space for city agencies came into question late last year after THE CITY reported on the selection of an office tower at 14 Wall St. as the new headquarters for the city Department for the Aging, an agency that currently occupies a city-owned building.

That lease deal was supervised by Jesse Hamilton, an official at the Department of Citywide istrative Services (DCAS) who is a pal of the mayor’s, while the tower is owned by Alexander Rovt, a billionaire who months earlier raised $15,000 for the mayor’s legal defense fund. Politico reported that Hamilton personally intervened to cut off a pending lease for the aging agency and instead steer the deal to Rovt.

At a subsequent Council oversight hearing led by Councilmember Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn), Hamilton was a no-show but DCAS officials conceded that they’d initially picked another site at 250 Broadway and made a “best and final offer” before Hamilton interceded and the negotiations switched to 14 Wall St.

The city Department of Investigation (DOI) subsequently launched a probe that is still ongoing.

The current City Charter assigns the City Planning Commission to do initial review and approval of leases, with the City Council ultimately having the power to intervene.

The charter commission now proposes to assign lease reviews to the city comptroller, an elected fiscal watchdog independent of City Hall.

The reform language would require the city agency arranging the lease — most often DCAS — to provide details on the cost benefits of proposed leases and provide a list of alternative sites that were considered.

On Thursday Restler praised the Council’s proposed charter changes, stating, “It’s clear that we need more rigorous and independent oversight of lease agreements involving the city of New York. These are very substantial financial transactions and we need to ensure that taxpayer money is being spent in optimal ways.”

He noted the investigation of Hamilton’s role in the proposed 14 Wall St. lease, stating, “There have been too many instances in the Adams istration of shady dealings. This proposal would help ensure that lease transactions are above board.”

The proposed lease remains on hold. The 14 Wall St. dealings all happened behind closed doors because the process by which the city chooses which landlords win lucrative leases is handled privately. 

“This is our attempt to place the responsibility in the appropriate office and also making sure that office has the appropriate information,” said Danielle Castaldi-Micca, executive director of the council’s commission. “We think the comptroller’s office may be a more appropriate place to review what are essentially contracts.”

She did not directly link the proposed change to the 14 Wall St. affair, but noted, “I’ve been in government a long time, our commissioners have been in government or government adjacent for a long time. Sometimes there are illustrative examples.”

The recommended reforms to be released Friday are preliminary. A series of public hearings starting June 16 and ending July 1 will then take place, followed by a final report later this summer. 

The Council could get this proposed reform on the November ballot, but if not, it will likely be put before voters next year — after the mayoral election.

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Jessica, a 33-year-old special education teacher at a local private school, was sitting damp-eyed on a stoop near immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza.

Her husband, Jean Carlos, had come Monday morning for a hearing in his asylum case, and Jessica, feeling a growing sense of unease, had decided to accompany him.

The two exchanged WhatsApp messages throughout the morning while Jessica waited outside in a nearby park. But when THE CITY encountered Jessica on that afternoon, it had been hours since she’d heard from him.

“I don’t even want to get up,” Jessica said. “I feel like I’m leaving him here.”

Jessica, a U.S. citizen who was born and raised in Jamaica, Queens to Ecuadorian parents, has a two-year-old daughter with Jean Carlos, who’s also 33 and just arrived from Ecuador last year. The family is one of many whose have been separated this week by ICE agents as they round up immigrants leaving routine court appearances in Lower Manhattan immigration courthouses as part of the Trump istration push to massively increase the number of deportations. 

Those arrests, along with others at ICE check-ins at a nearby office building, have left the streets around Foley Square full of people waiting anxiously for their loved ones to return from a scheduled visit, with many dazed and teary-eyed after losing with someone who entered an immigration proceeding and never returned. 

Late Monday morning, Jean Carlos’s messages to Jessica shifted from ordinary to urgent. 

“Ahh, so many ICE police, I hope nothing happens,” he wrote in Spanish at 11:04, according to WhatsApp messages shared with THE CITY.

“Don’t scare me like that,” she wrote back a minute later. 

“They’re outside of the room,” he responded. 

‘Amazed by All the Lights’ 4p5t6t

Jessica often spent summer vacations in Ecuador, visiting extended family in the seaside city of Manta, where her mother is originally from. On one such visit in 2020, she met Jean Carlos at a family quinceañera. Both Jessica and Jean Carlos have two sons from previous relationships, and the tenderness he showed his own kids and hers  caught her eye right away.

THE CITY is withholding both of their full names due to the precarity of Jean Carlos’s immigration case.

The relationship continued long-distance, with summers spent together in Ecuador. “He was funny. We liked the same music. I like the beach. He likes to surf. He likes adrenaline,” she said. The two were an easy match. 

They got married in Ecuador in 2021 and started the paperwork for a spousal visa so they could be reunited in New York City. Three years later, still maintaining the long-distance relationship, Jessica gave birth to a baby girl. 

“I gave birth alone. He was like, ‘I promise you I’ll be here for her first birthday,’” she recalled. 

While Jean Carlos continued waiting for his spousal visa, he faced mounting threats from gangs shaking him down for a cut of the money he made as a street vendor selling hamburgers. Finally, he decided to take his chances and make his way to the United States border. En route he was robbed multiple times, kidnapped and broke his foot. But by the spring of 2024 he made it across the border on crutches. 

The couple had a happy reunion in New York City, a few weeks before their daughter’s second birthday, and Jessica got to see the city she’d grown up in with new eyes when she took Jean to ride the Staten Island Ferry and visit Times Square. 

“He was amazed by all the lights,” Jessica said, reminiscing about how Jean Carlos once exclaimed, “‘This is what I see in the movies!’”

“Me as a New Yorker, I don’t like being where there’s a lot of people, but I was a tourist with him,” Jessica recalled. This summer, the two planned to go on a horse-drawn carriage ride in Central Park and ride on a double-decker bus, things she always thought were corny. 

Jean Carlos, working odd construction jobs, was on edge that immigration enforcement might show up at any given job site, Jessica said. He applied for asylum and had his fingerprints taken as part of the process, continuing to work through the proper channels. Even as rumours spread on TikTok of courthouse arrests, he was determined to show up. 

On Monday, Jessica called out of work to head to court with him. The two left their Queens apartment in the early morning, saying goodbye to their 2-year-old daughter, who they left with a caretaker.

“It was like he knew,” Jessica said. “He hugged her this morning [and said], ‘If I don’t see you later, Mommy’s coming back.’”

“I was like, ‘Don’t say stuff like that.’”

‘A Farce Already’ 2m2v4v

Jessica and Jean Carlos arrived at the lower Manhattan courthouse just as the Trump istration was pushing to vastly expand the use of “expedited removal,” which it says allows them to end court proceedings and rapidly remove anyone who has been in the country for less than two years.

That’s part of an ongoing effort to massively increase the number of arrests, and deportations, nationwide — a move that necessarily means targeting people with no criminal histories. This Tuesday, the agency made 2,200 arrests nationwide, according to NBC News, its record for a single day.  

That push has hit lower Manhattan hard, with ICE agents using three adjacent immigration courthouses as well as offices where immigrants report for required check-ins to make dozens of arrests this week. 

Inside courtrooms. THE CITY has repeatedly seen immigration judges dismissing cases at the request of government lawyers.

Immediately after those cases were dropped, some immigrants were arrested just outside of their courtrooms by federal agents, many wearing masks. 

The Department of Homeland Security said earlier this week that its agents often wear face coverings to “protect themselves from being targeted by known and suspected gang , murderers and rapists.”

When the mass arrests inside the court building began this Monday, ICE agents huddled together in the lobby to grab people exiting elevators. 

Later in the week, as more reporters and activists began showing up to document the detentions, ICE agents moved from the lobbies up onto the floors of immigration court, lurking in the hallways to grab people as they exited hearings and escort them to the freight elevator.

Earlier this week, THE CITY saw one judge offer several people 30-day extensions so that they could research the government’s moves to toss their cases. But even after attorneys informed ICE officers that their clients’ cases were still ongoing, the people were outside the courtroom. 

Andrés Santamaria, an attorney with the immigrant-led advocacy group Make the Road New York, said he’d witnessed some cases where an immigration judge denied the government’s motion to dismiss outright — but people were still detained after exiting courtrooms nonetheless.

Santamaria said the situation highlights how little power immigration judges, who are executive branch employees of the Department of Homeland Security rather than of the judiciary, really have. 

“This whole thing is a farce already,” said Santamaria. “Anyone who is here two years [or less] is at risk of this,” he said. 

‘They’re Taking People’ y6w2b

After ICE agents first showed up outside the courtroom Jean Carlos was in, he and Jessica continued messaging back and forth. At 12:46, just over an hour and a half after he’d first told her about the ICE police, as he called them, outside the courtroom door, the arrests began.

“They’re taking people. Love. What the fuck,” he wrote. 

“What are you talking about, love, what did they say.”

Jean Carlos had time to make a quick video call, telling Jessica he loved her and their daughter, and snapping photos of his immigration court paperwork. 

They show that his judge hadn’t allowed the government’s request to dismiss his asylum case, and he was due back in court in June of 2026. 

Then Jessica stopped hearing from him. 

Hours later, she was still sitting on a stoop a few blocks away, eyes damp with tears, uncertain what had happened to her husband and debating what she should do next. Attorneys who were present at 26 Federal Plaza later confirmed to her he had been detained.

“How do you expect people to do things the right way if you’re going go arrest them like this,” she wondered. “How do I go back home now and look at my daughter?”

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