New York City officials are racing to scale back the use of National Guard members in migrant shelter operations ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, THE CITY has learned.
The incoming president has promised to unleash the largest deportation campaign in the nation’s history. His “border czar,” Tom Homan, has threatened New York and other so-called sanctuary cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement: “Don’t test us.”
An administration source who was not authorized to speak to reporters said the city is working to remove all Guard members presently in shelters by early next year.
Advocates fear Trump could federalize the Guard, and use members now working at city-sponsored shelters to round up migrants living there.
“The National Guard could be used by the federal government to try and target our clients who are new arrivals,” said Kathryn Kliff, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society who added that city officials had mentioned preparations to remove Guard members from shelters at a recent meeting she participated in.
“We’re just very glad that the city is not going to be having the National Guard in shelters anymore,” Kliff said. “Hopefully that helps protect people.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul first sent National Guard members to work in city migrant shelters in October 2022 amid the first surge in new arrivals. Costing the state $451 million over the past three fiscal years, they help with shelter operations but do not play a role in security, according to Eric Durr, a spokesperson for New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs, which oversees the National Guard.
Dave Giffen, executive director for the Coalition for the Homeless, said he welcomed the phase-out of the Guard.
“While I know the city appreciates having the National Guard step in to fill a critical need when it couldn’t find enough staff for all the shelters that they were opening, it’s way past time to focus on delivering that kind of help that the new arrivals need to move out.”
William Fowler, a spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams, said the city had always intended to phase out the use of the Guard before state funding for migrant-related operations runs out in April. As of the start of November, the National Guard was no longer running operations at any migrant shelter, Fowler noted.
Around 300 state Guard members are still stationed in 51 shelters, while another 500 are working at the Roosevelt Hotel reception center and four additional application centers, where migrants get assistance filing immigration paperwork, said Durr.
Asked Tuesday what level of cooperation his administration would offer to federal authorities seeking to deport people in New York City en masse, Adams said “I would like to speak with our border czar and find out what his plans are, where our common grounds are. We can work together [to] reach what the American people have been saying to us: Secure our borders, address the people who are committing violent acts in our country and make sure that we have our citizens — are going to be safe.”
‘We Are Scrambling’
The move to scale back the use of the Guard in migrant operations is one of a number of maneuvers playing out behind the scenes as the city braces for a second Trump administration, with around 60,000 recent arrivals from the southern border living in emergency city shelters. Those include a tent facility for families on federal land at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, which city officials are considering shutting down.
“We are scrambling to think through every scenario we can and try to figure out what measures the city can put in place to protect against this,” said Giffen, who is in regular contact with administration officials attempting to prepare for the incoming Trump presidency. “This is a potential violation of everything the city stands for.”
After two years of growth, the city’s migrant shelters are starting to scale back, coinciding with city data that shows a decline in the number of new arrivals for four straight months as tighter border controls took hold.
Among those that have shut down in recent weeks include one located in a warehouse at JFK airport, and more closures in the pipeline, including the Randall’s Island shelter, which is slated to close in February.
But Adams, who once said the influx of migrants would “destroy New York City,” has offered mixed messages about how his administration will deal with the incoming president. He’s said he opposes mass deportation but has also indicated his support for a City Council bill that would repeal New York City’s “sanctuary city” law, which prohibits cooperation between city agencies and the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, with limited exceptions.
He recently told the Wall Street Journal that he wants the NYPD working with ICE to “remove migrant criminals from our city, from our country.”
With or without the National Guard staffing facilities where migrants live and frequent, Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, warned Trump has broad authority either to redeploy New York’s State National Guard or use the U.S. military to assist with immigration enforcement.
“Depending on the authority that the president decides to use, there’s essentially nothing [Hochul] can do,” Nunn said, who described the president’s powers as “extraordinarily broad.”
There’s a long history of both Democratic and Republican presidents federalizing National Guard units that otherwise report to state governors to assist Customs and Border Patrol on the U.S.-Mexico border under both Republican and Democratic presidents.
And while using the military to assist with immigration enforcement farther from the border would be unusual, it would most likely be legally defensible, Nunn said.
The president can federalize state’s National Guards if “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States,” while a provision of the Insurrection Act allows the president to deploy the military domestically to “enforce the laws” of the United States when there are “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion.”
Nunn explained Trump’s attorneys could argue sanctuary cities present an “obstruction,” adding that the Supreme Court has previously ruled only the President gets to decide when that threshold has been met, and even the court system doesn’t get a veto.
“Nobody really gets to question the President’s decision on that point,” Nunn said.
