New York
G.O.P. Representatives and Democratic Mayors Spar Over Sanctuary Cities
House Republicans on Wednesday accused the Democratic mayors of New York, Denver, Boston and Chicago of harboring criminal immigrants in an acrimonious congressional hearing over what role large cities should have in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Under fiery and angry questioning from Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, the mayors defended their policies and their cities’ efforts to house and feed migrants, tens of thousands of whom were bused to their communities by Republican governors. The mayors rejected the notion that the local police should help in the administration’s deportation efforts.
“We do not have the capacity for our law enforcement to be doing federal immigration enforcement,” Mayor Mike Johnston of Denver told lawmakers. “But we want to be partners in making sure we are pulling violent criminals off the street.”
Mr. Johnston spoke of the influx of 42,000 migrants two years ago, many bused from Texas, “mostly women and children in 10-degree weather with only sandals and a T-shirt.”
The hearings seemed to capture the political moment. It was a clash of the law-and-order Republican Party led by President Trump and liberal politicians running cities, broadly known as sanctuary cities, that have large populations of immigrants.
Even the language employed by both sides underlined the stark differences in the ways the two parties approach the issue. The chairman of the committee spoke of “illegal aliens,” a term now out of favor among Democratic leaders and immigrant advocates, who prefer the term “undocumented.”
At the heart of the hearing was a question seemingly unique to America’s decentralized political system — the extent to which one segment of government is allowed to curb its cooperation with another.
Republicans are seeking a more proactive approach by cities, saying that local police departments should be doing more to facilitate the transfer of undocumented immigrants to the federal authorities. Democrats counter that if cities were deputized to help enforce federal immigration laws, they would have to divert resources away from other priorities, such as investigating crimes and apprehending violent criminals.
“There is no place in America, not one, that actually provides sanctuary from federal law,” Representative Dave Min of California, a Democrat, said at the hearing. “The real issue here is whether state and local governments should spend scarce taxpayer dollars to help the federal government enforce its immigration priorities.”
Republicans repeatedly sought to induce the mayors into the kind of stumbles that derailed the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, who lost their jobs after testifying before Congress about campus antisemitism.
At the start of the hearings, the committee’s chairman, Representative James Comer, Republican of Kentucky, referred to a number of cases where undocumented immigrants were charged with rape or murder. He asked the mayors whether they would hand over the “criminal” to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
“Our local law enforcement works hard every day to get criminals off the streets of Chicago,” replied Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago.
Mr. Comer interjected, “Will you turn that criminal over to ICE?”
“We do not harbor criminals,” Mr. Johnson said, adding details of criminal procedure without directly answering the question.
The exchange ended with Mr. Comer concluding that it proved that Democratic mayors were shielding criminals from federal law enforcement.
“We have to have cooperation,” he said.
The past several years have seen record levels of unauthorized immigration into the United States, and Americans have become more supportive of stemming the flow. A poll from The New York Times and Ipsos in January found that a vast majority of Americans — 87 percent — supported deporting undocumented immigrants with a criminal record. A majority said they favored “deporting all immigrants who are here illegally.”
Republicans stepped up their confrontational tone as the hearings wore on, with Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, asking questions like whether the mayors hated President Trump more than they loved their country. She accused the mayors of having “blood on your hands.”
A number of Republican lawmakers who spoke at the hearing said the mayors were violating federal laws and should be prosecuted. They cited specific cases where people had been attacked or killed by undocumented migrants, suggesting cities’ immigration polices had contributed to those crimes.
“Every one of you is exposed to criminal culpability here,” Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, told the mayors. “That’s the reality of it.”
Several times in the hearings the mayors turned Republicans’ accusations back on them to try to score their own political points, urging them to focus on the economy, pass immigration reform, strengthen gun laws and oppose other Trump administration policies the mayors described as harmful.
“If you wanted to make us safe, pass gun reforms,” Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston said.
At another point, Ms. Wu spoke to the damage that deporting large numbers of migrants would have on cities.
“I do not support mass deportation,” she said. “That would be devastating for our economy. There are millions of people who are running our small businesses, going to our schools.”
Mayor Eric Adams of New York, who has talked of allowing ICE into jails in spite of his city’s sanctuary laws, did not come under the same level of scrutiny from Republicans.
But he was questioned by Democrats about accusations that he had engaged in a quid pro quo with the Trump administration, which dropped federal corruption charges against him, saying that it needed his help on immigration. Representative Robert Garcia, Democrat of California, called on Mr. Adams to resign; the mayor said he had done nothing wrong.
Mr. Adams grew weary of the line of questioning. “It appears as though we’re asking the same questions over and over and over again,” he told Representative Jasmine Crockett, Democrat of Texas. “My comments are not going to change. No quid pro quo, no agreement. I did nothing wrong.”
Although Republicans spared Mr. Adams from the most aggressive questioning, the vision he laid out did not fully jibe with the Trump administration’s talking points.
“I must create an atmosphere that allows every law-abiding resident, documented or not, to access vital services without fear of being turned over to federal authorities,” he said during the hearing.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Maya C. Miller reported from Washington and Thomas Fuller from San Francisco. Jack Healy and Patricia Mazzei contributed reporting.
New York
N.Y.P.D. Narcotics Unit Under Review After a Beating Is Caught on Tape
The New York Police Department said on Tuesday that it was launching a three-month review of its narcotics division after two of its detectives were recorded brutally beating a man they had mistakenly arrested during a drug sweep last week.
As part of the review, the Police Department said it had disbanded the team responsible for the drug sweep, a small group within its narcotics unit in Brooklyn. That team was shut down on Friday, and its members have all been reassigned or placed on desk duty, the department said.
The overhaul of the division was announced a week after videos showing two narcotics detectives punching, kicking and dragging a man across the floor of a Brooklyn liquor store spread online.
The videos show the two detectives beating the man, a security guard named Timothy Brown, as they struggle to wrestle him into handcuffs for nearly eight minutes. The department said the arrest had been part of an undercover operation in the area and that the detectives had believed Mr. Brown to be involved in a drug deal. After beating and arresting Mr. Brown, the police determined that they had targeted the wrong man and that Mr. Brown had not been involved in the drug sale.
The police charged Mr. Brown with resisting arrest and obstructing governmental administration, but the Brooklyn District attorney’s office said it would decline to prosecute the case.
The footage, and news of the mistaken arrest, prompted immediate backlash from New York lawmakers, civil libertarians and police critics, some of whom described the behavior as extrajudicial punishment. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has been careful not to anger the city’s police force, last week condemned the conduct in his strongest words of criticism since taking office. “The violence used by N.Y.P.D. officers in this video is extremely disturbing and unacceptable,” Mr. Mamdani wrote in a post on social media on Wednesday.
The Police Department moved quickly to discipline the two men in the video, Volkan Maden and Michael P. Algerio, both of whom have served with the N.Y.P.D. for more than a decade. On Wednesday, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch called the videos “deeply disturbing” and said that both detectives had been placed under investigation and stripped of their guns and shields.
In the following days, the department removed the sergeant who oversaw Detectives Maden and Algerio from his post and placed him on modified duty. By Friday, six more detectives on the team, as well as the lieutenant and captain who oversaw the entire North Brooklyn narcotics operation, had all been reassigned.
In interviews last week, several lawmakers praised Ms. Tisch and Mr. Mamdani for taking swift disciplinary action against what they called a shocking display of police brutality.
“This video looked like something from the 1990s,” Oswald Feliz, the chair of the City Council’s Public Safety committee, said. “This had nothing to do with public safety, it had everything to do with violence and that is violence that we will not and cannot accept.”
But for some, the behavior of the two veteran detectives raised concerns about how the unit and department was functioning.
Some critics have pointed out that Detectives Maden and Algerio appear to use cellphones, rather than police radios, to call for backup. Others noted that neither appeared to be wearing, or using, body cameras during the arrest.
Lincoln Restler, a city councilman who used to represent the Brooklyn district where the mistaken arrest happened, said the episode had concerned him enough to refer it to the city’s Department of Investigation. In his referral, Mr. Restler requested that the agency examine the Police Department’s communication practices for instances of unauthorized text and phone communication, according to a copy of the email obtained by The New York Times.
In the city’s policing community, reactions to the video have been more mixed. Union leaders and several former officers have chafed at the mayor’s response, defending the behavior of the two detectives and saying that Mr. Brown had no right to resist arrest. (It is not clear from the video whether Mr. Brown was in fact resisting arrest or if he was unable to comply while being beaten.)
“This is what happens when City Hall rushes to judge based on a viral clip instead of facts,” the detective union’s president, Scott Munro, said in a statement last week. “It’s reckless. It’s dangerous. And it’s a failure of leadership.”
The Police Department said on Tuesday that the 90-day review will aim to address and reform the kind of policy violations raised by Mr. Restler and others. It added that both detectives were being investigated by the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau, which looks into reports of police misconduct.
The review will be led by the chief of department, Michael J. LiPetri, and will examine the policies of the entire narcotics division to make sure that its officers are enforcing their duties “safely and effectively,” the department said.
As part of the process, the department will review the current training that narcotics detectives receive and will ensure that all officers in the unit use “appropriate equipment.” The department also said it would clarify its current policy to require detectives to use body cameras during drug operations.
The department also said it will require commanding officers to regularly check in on the narcotics unit to ensure that it is meeting departmental standards for professional conduct during its operations.
New York
Harvey Weinstein’s Third Trial on Rape Charge Opens in Manhattan
She testified last year that she first met the former producer when she was about 27, after moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. He pressured her into giving him a massage shortly after, she said.
In 2013, she was visiting New York and had planned a morning meal with friends and the producer. He arrived early and got a hotel room over her objections, Ms. Mann testified. Still, she went with him to the room, where he injected his penis with medication that produced an erection and then raped her, she said.
She tried to fight, she said, but eventually “I just gave up, I wanted to get out.”
In the years that followed, Ms. Mann said, she fell into a complex relationship with Mr. Weinstein, which included friendly email exchanges, phone calls and several consensual sexual encounters. In her testimony last year, she called it a “dance” in which she tried to keep him both happy and at a distance. At one point, Ms. Mann said, she decided to enter a romantic relationship with him.
During cross-examination, a lawyer for Mr. Weinstein questioned Ms. Mann about money — close to $500,000 — that she had received as settlement payments through a fund established as part of the bankruptcy of Mr. Weinstein’s company.
“This is not about money for me,” Ms. Mann testified.
For this trial, Mr. Weinstein has hired a new trial team of Jacob Kaplan, Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos.
The lawyers have already signaled that their defense will differ, at least slightly. They have indicated that they will not argue that Ms. Mann made the accusations against their client for financial gain.
New York
Gotti Grandson Is Sentenced to 15 Months for Covid Relief Fraud
The grandson of an infamous mob boss was sentenced to prison on Monday after pleading guilty to defrauding the federal government out of more than $1 million in Covid relief funds, some of which he invested in cryptocurrency.
Carmine G. Agnello Jr., the grandson of John J. Gotti, the former leader of the Gambino crime family, was sentenced to 15 months in prison by Judge Nusrat J. Choudhury in Federal District Court in Central Islip, N.Y. She also ordered Mr. Agnello to pay $1.3 million in restitution to the Small Business Administration.
Mr. Agnello, 39, fidgeted in court on Monday. Some of his family members were in attendance, including mob figures previously convicted of federal crimes: his father Carmine (the Bull) Agnello and his uncle John A. Gotti.
Wearing a gray, checkered suit, Mr. Agnello read a brief statement in court calling his crime “wrong, selfish and criminal.” He added that he never wanted to “find myself in prison” like so many of his relatives.
“I regret not only what I did, but the disappointment I caused my family,” he said.
Starting in April 2020, Mr. Agnello applied for at least three loans for his Queens-based company, Crown Auto Parts & Recycling L.L.C., through a program meant to support small businesses hurt by the pandemic.
He applied for the loans under false pretenses, claiming he did not have a criminal record when he in fact did have one, prosecutors said. He then used more than $400,000 of the borrowed money to invest in a crypto business.
Mr. Agnello pleaded guilty in September 2024 to a single count of wire fraud. Federal prosecutors with the Eastern District of New York had sought a sentence of around three years, as well as $1.3 million in restitution.
He “shamefully lined his own pockets with government and taxpayers’ dollars,” Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
As a child, Mr. Agnello starred on the reality television show “Growing Up Gotti” alongside his mother, Victoria Gotti, and two brothers, Frank and John. The show, which ran on A&E for three seasons and was canceled in 2005, depicted a Long Island household in the milieu of “The Sopranos.”
At the time, Mr. Agnello’s father was in prison and had been divorced from Ms. Gotti, a former columnist for The New York Post, leaving her to raise three rowdy sons. The intense media focus on the Gottis gave the grandson “a distorted sense of reality,” wrote John A. Gotti, Mr. Agnello’s uncle and the leader of the crime family in the 1990s, in a letter to Judge Choudhury before the sentencing.
“Being part of the Gotti family meant growing up with too much attention, expectations and society’s judgment that most kids never have to deal with,” Mr. Gotti wrote. He added that his nephew faced pressure “to live up to the Gotti name.”
Mr. Agnello found his way into the family business, in a way. In 2018, he pleaded guilty to running an unregistered scrap business. That case echoed his father’s racketeering conviction after he firebombed a rival scrap company in Queens that was run by undercover police officers.
Mr. Agnello’s grandfather exercised power with unrelenting brutality and delighted in the spotlight. He seized control of the family by organizing the 1985 assassination of his predecessor, Paul Castellano, before running enterprises that investigators estimated earned about $500 million a year from ventures that included extorting unions, illegal gambling, loan-sharking and stock fraud.
After numerous acquittals in state and federal trials, aided by juries that had been tampered with, Mr. Gotti earned the nickname “Teflon Don” from New York City’s tabloids. He was ultimately convicted in 1992 on 13 criminal counts and died of cancer in 2002 at age 61 in a federal prison hospital.
Jeffrey Lichtman, a lawyer for Mr. Agnello, told Judge Choudhury that Mr. Agnello had grown up with no male role models in his life, as 15 of his family members had gone to prison, including his grandfather when he was 5 and his father when he was 14.
Mr. Lichtman, who also represented Mr. Agnello’s uncle, called his client’s crime “horrific behavior” but added that his conduct was inevitable.
Charles P. Kelly, a federal prosecutor, said in court on Monday that Mr. Agnello’s family history was no excuse for his fraud.
“This case is not about John Gotti; it’s about Carmine Agnello,” Mr. Kelly said.
This year, Steven Metcalf, another lawyer for Mr. Agnello, asked Judge Choudhury for a sentence with no prison time so that Mr. Agnello could donate a kidney to his mother, who has renal disease and also appeared in court on Monday. Without the transplant, Ms. Gotti could die during her son’s prison term, Mr. Metcalf said.
But in April, Mr. Agnello hired Mr. Lichtman, who apologized to the judge for Mr. Metcalf’s “voluminous argument” in support of Mr. Agnello, which stretched hundreds of pages.
As Judge Choudhury announced the sentence, Mr. Agnello kept his gaze forward and nodded. Judge Choudhury pushed back on the notion that his upbringing drove him to commit wire fraud.
“You were raised with access to opportunities. These are opportunities that many people in our society do not have,” she said.
After the sentence on Monday, Mr. Agnello embraced his family members in a hallway of the courthouse, one by one, kissing his uncle and his father on the cheek. He must surrender to the authorities to begin serving his prison term by July 20.
Outside the courthouse, his uncle John A. Gotti addressed a group of reporters.
“We had 15 members of our family who went to prison,” he said. “I think that’s enough. I think we did our time.”
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