The city’s Law Department on Tuesday released a new, revised guidance on how city workers should handle visits from federal immigration authorities amid stepped-up enforcement by the Trump administration.
The new set of instructions removed or changed some of the most controversial phrasing from previous versions. One sparked confusion and outrage for directing city employees to allow ICE agents into city facilities, even without a warrant, if they “reasonably feel threatened.”
“The experience of the scenario planning exercises and the evolving pronouncements from the federal government have highlighted the need to clear up misperceptions and misunderstandings about New York City law and policy,” Corporation Counsel Muriel Goode-Trufant said in a two-minute video communicating the newest guidelines.
The initial memo was issued in January. The newest version, an updated version of the same flowchart, directs employees to “never engage in a physical or verbal altercation with a law enforcement officer.”
Tuesday’s guidance gives a script for city workers to follow and directs them to call their general counsel after ICE agents present themselves.
On Monday, the Adams administration circulated a new flowchart guidance that directed workers “do not interfere” with federal agents who insist on entering even absent having a judicial warrant. Kayla Mamelak, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said this version was a draft released to the administration, elected officials and labor leaders.
The city has said the guidance is about assuring the safety of city workers and that representations it was “instructing city employees to cooperate with ICE for civil enforcement” were inaccurate.
Goode-Trufant said the newest guidance does not apply to the city’s public schools, Department of Corrections and the Police Department.
Both the United Federation of Teachers and Council of School Supervisors and Administrators both pushed back on the initial guidance.
“While the guidance was intended to prevent city workers from getting into altercations with non-local law enforcement, we believe it causes confusion,” reads a Friday memo from Council of School Supervisors and Administrators and obtained by the Daily News.
“We engaged the DOE, and the chancellor’s team shared that there have been no changes to the protocols they previously shared with principals which indicated that non-local law enforcement must have a warrant to enter school buildings and that principals should call senior field counsel before admitting any agents.”
Mamelak said that since the Department of Corrections and NYPD deal with those accused of or who have committed crimes, “it’s a different more nuanced set of circumstances.”