Council Bill Would Limit Jail’s Aid to Immigration Officials
By SAM DOLNICK
Published: August 1, 2011

Rikers Island officials have long compiled lists of foreign-born inmates who end up in their custody. They routinely give this information to federal immigration officials, who have their own office at the jail. Deportations often follow.

With the city’s assistance, immigration authorities annually detain and deport thousands of inmates charged with a range of offenses, from misdemeanors for theft to felony drug dealing.

But now the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, wants to curtail this practice by permitting the jail to cooperate with the federal immigration authorities only in limited circumstances.

Ms. Quinn is proposing legislation, to be introduced this month, that could touch off tensions over immigrant rights between the City Council and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has defended the program in the past.

“On Rikers, there is a dragnet as it relates to every foreign-born person,â€