Federal prosecutors have despatched a felony subpoena to a Manhattan resort housing undocumented migrants by a New York Metropolis program offering shelter to asylum seekers, in line with a duplicate of the submitting obtained by the Guardian.
The subpoena issued on Wednesday asks the resort to offer “an inventory of full names of aliens at present residing” on the website in addition to “any corresponding figuring out info”, together with dates of start, nationality, and identification numbers. The subpoena additionally asks the resort to offer proof about “an alleged violation” of federal immigration regulation.
A supply shared the doc on the situation that the Guardian not share the identify of their employer as a result of the resort is now a part of a federal felony investigation.
The subpoena marks the newest escalation within the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. NY city is at present seeing a flurry of protests and demonstrations in protection of Columbia pupil Mahmoud Khalil, who’s being focused by the administration for deportation over his participation in pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations.
The federal subpoena, despatched to the resort Wednesday by prosecutors for the southern district of New York, additionally seems to hunt details about New York Metropolis authorities officers. It asks the resort to offer the names of “entities and/or people which are accountable for the funding” of the “unlawful immigrant/migrant shelter packages”.
Adams officers didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from the Guardian.
Two of the prosecutors named within the subpoena – Kevin Grossinger, assistant United States lawyer, and Scott Laragy with the felony division of the Division of Justice – declined to touch upon the subpoena.
Nicholas Biase, chief of public affairs for the US lawyer’s workplace for the southern district of New York, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark as of publication.
In a telephone name, Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition, criticized the subpoena, calling it an instance of the Trump administration “weaponizing” the Division of Justice in opposition to New York Metropolis residents: “As an alternative of losing authorities time and assets, we needs to be pondering of how we enhance the day by day lives of all of the individuals who name this nation dwelling.”
Since 2022, New York Metropolis’s municipal authorities has contracted with quite a few lodges, together with a number of distinguished ones in midtown Manhattan, to assist shelter an inflow of migrants searching for asylum. The shelters shortly grew to become the websites of native political backlash and rightwing furor nationally.
In February, Mayor Eric Adams introduced he would shut a migrant consumption heart at a type of websites, the Roosevelt Resort. The choice got here simply weeks after Trump justice officers started shifting to drop corruption prices in opposition to the mayor, a transfer which sparked quite a few Division of Justice resignations.
Adams has denied the allegations in opposition to him.
Trump has been in workplace for lower than two months, however has been lively in imposing his administration’s promised crackdown on immigration within the US. In keeping with detention administration knowledge from the Division of Homeland Safety, February 2025 noticed extra arrests than any month within the final seven years. US immigration detention can also be crammed to capability, at 47,600 detainees, a senior US Immigration and Customs Enforcement official mentioned on a name with reporters on Wednesday, Reuters reported.
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