A criminal investigation by Trump’s Justice Department targeting migrants who sought asylum in New York City has spread alarm about a potentially dark new chapter in the president’s brutal crackdown on immigration.
The government, in a criminal subpoena, has demanded a Midtown hotel hand over the names, dates of birth and other details about migrant residents, sources told the Daily News. It wasn’t immediately clear if other shelters have been targeted, despite media reports saying the Roosevelt Hotel and other locations were involved.
The feds are potentially also scrutinizing government officials involved in multimillion-dollar contracts the city entered into with hotels to deal with an influx of more than 200,000 asylum seekers beginning in spring 2022, according to a report in the Guardian.
Josh Goldfein, an attorney for the Legal Aid Society, said the information demands represented a catchall attempt by the Trump administration to scare as many people as possible, the result of which will be that people have nowhere else to go.
“They’ve been very clear that they were coming after New York regardless of whether that accomplishes their supposed goals,” the attorney said. “No one could defend this as a targeted approach to identify people who represent a danger. It’s retaliatory and meant to frighten people.”
The investigation is being handled by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which referred The Daily News to Department of Justice headquarters, indicating that senior officials in Washington, D.C., initiated the probe.
The move comes as the Trump administration has sharpened its focus on the Empire State, home to one of the largest immigrant populations in the country, with Trump’s border czar on Wednesday threatening Gov. Kathy Hochul with doubling the number of federal immigration agents in New York if she didn’t fall in line with the administration’s policy objectives.
While Homan was up in Albany, lawyers for the federal government were in Manhattan Federal Court defending immigration authorities’ detention of Columbia University graduate student and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil based on his political views regarding the conflict in Gaza.
The probe also comes amid a report on CNN that President Donald Trump plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which would give him sweeping powers to detain and deport citizens en masse if they’re determined to be from an enemy state. Last year, he vowed to invoke the wartime law to “dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil.”
Anti-immigrant politicians on the right have baselessly alleged migrant hotels in New York to be hotbeds of gang and drug activity.
In excusing the federal government’s clawing back more than $80 million in FEMA grant money from New York City, lawyers for the Trump administration claimed the city was funding “illegal alien hotels.” They’ve claimed, without evidence, that The Roosevelt, which served as a primary intake center for new migrants arriving in the city, was being used as a base of operations for Venezuelan gang members.
Luba Cortes, the lead immigration organizer at Make the Road New York, told The News she worried that Trump’s actions and the mayor’s apparent willingness to cooperate, outlined in a deal to dismiss Adams’s federal corruption case, have jeopardized the city’s sanctuary policies and other protections.
“Right now, we are in very difficult and harrowing times,” Cortes said. “(Migrants) shouldn’t be used as scapegoats for the Adams administration or the Trump administration.”
On Thursday, a source confirmed to the Daily News that The Hotel Chandler on E. 31st St. was targeted with the subpoena. The shelter, however, does not house asylum seekers, though it has a name similar to a nearby migrant shelter.
Sources who spoke to The News Thursday believed the feds may have mixed up The Chandler with the Candler building on W. 42nd St., an office space converted into a migrant shelter for single adults. A brawl between a group of asylum seekers and two New York Police Department officers outside that facility in January 2024 became a major political flashpoint in the immigration debate among right-wing politicians, who held it up as proof of a supposed migrant crime wave in the city.
Manuel Castro, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, emphasized that the city’s sanctuary laws have not changed despite the federal government’s probe into the hotels and encouraged migrants to continue to send their kids to school and seek care at hospitals.
“To our immigrant New Yorkers, including our undocumented immigrant neighbors, friends, family members, know there are many people in our city, your fellow New Yorkers, that deeply care about you,” he said.
In comments to reporters Thursday, Adams said the feds hadn’t told City Hall anything about the probe. Adams expressed concern for shelter staffers but did not comment on the residents themselves.
“The workers should not be getting caught up in the politics of it,” Adams said. “And that is who my heart goes out to. And I say to them, I’m sorry you’re going through all of that we’re seeing.”
An attorney for Hotel Chandler did not respond to The News’ requests for comment.
