Brawl between migrants and police in Times Square touches off backlash
NEW YORK — A video showing a group of migrants brawling with police in Times Square has touched off a political furor and renewed debate over a long-standing New York City policy that limits cooperation between local police and federal immigration authorities.
The surveillance footage, recorded Jan. 27 outside a Manhattan homeless shelter, shows several men kicking officers on a sidewalk and trying to pry them off a man police had taken to the ground. Police have arrested seven people in connection with the attack, though prosecutors dropped charges against one person they say may not have been involved.
Nobody was seriously hurt, but the video of officers being pummeled has prompted waves of public outrage. Some of that fury has been directed at prosecutors and the court system after several of those arrested were freed from jail while awaiting trial.
Increasingly, New York City officials have aimed dire rhetoric at the tens of thousands of asylum seekers the city has put up in shelters and hotels over the past year. Some of the comments have dismayed immigration advocates, who say they are stirring up hatred over the actions of a few bad apples.
“A wave of migrant crime has washed over our city,” Police Commissioner Edward Caban said at a news conference Monday about a Venezuelan man being sought in a series of cellphone robberies. He likened the suspect’s accomplices to “ghost criminals,” claiming they had come to New York “with no criminal history, no photos, no social media.”
The NYPD released a video showing Mayor Eric Adams joining officers as they raided a Bronx apartment building in connection with that investigation Monday morning. The video included ominous music and an officer warning of “migrants preying on vulnerable New Yorkers,” while footage plays of a woman being dragged behind a scooter during a purse-snatching.
Pressed for details to back up the claim of a crime wave, however, police and city officials said they couldn’t provide them because the city doesn’t track crime trends by the nationality of suspects.
Most categories of crime are down since a surge of migrant arrivals began 18 months ago.
Alexa Avilés, the head of the City Council’s committee on immigration, accused the mayor and the NYPD of playing into “the same old Trumpian fear mongering and the systematic scapegoating of a diverse and vulnerable group of people.”
“I thought ‘crime was down?’” Avilés added. “Where is the evidence to support these claims?”
In press appearances Monday, Adams noted the vast majority of the nearly 175,000 migrants who have come to the city are law abiding. He said it would be wrong for “any New Yorker to look at people trying to fulfill the next step on the American Dream as criminal.”
But in recent days, Adams has also shown a willingness to pull back on a set of laws that often block the city from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement efforts.
Describing the Times Square incident as “an attack on the foundation of our symbol of safety,” Adams, a moderate Democrat and former police captain, called on the City Council to consider “if there should be more collaboration” with federal immigration officials. He did not elaborate.