President Donald Trump demanded cashless bail end immediately on Monday, citing crime in U.S. cities, as well as increased attacks on law enforcement.
“Crime in American Cities started to significantly rise when they went to CASHLESS BAIL. The WORST criminals are flooding our streets and endangering even our great law enforcement officers,” Trump wrote on TRUTH Social.
“It is a complete disaster, and must be ended, IMMEDIATELY!” Trump wrote.
The post was published as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem held a press conference in New York City after visiting a Customs and Border Protection officer who was shot while off-duty on Saturday night. The suspect is a previously deported Dominical national, who Noem said has a “rap sheet that is a mile long,” has an active warrant against him in Massachusetts for armed robbery with a firearm, and who has been arrested in New York City four separate times.
Noem criticized the open border policies under former President Joe Biden, as well as sanctuary polices in New York City, Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago in particular in the wake of the shooting.
“When I look at what Mayor Adams has done to New York City, it breaks my heart to see the families that have suffered because of his policies,” Noem said. “We can look across this country at other mayors. We look at Mayor Wu in Boston and what has happened there under her watch, what’s happened in LA with the riots and the violence and the protests that have gone on because of Mayor Bass and what she has perpetuated. When you look at Mayor Johnson in Chicago and how devastating it is to live in that city in some of those poorest communities, how they suffer every single day with the violence that’s in front of them.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer, has been a strong critic of the state’s cashless bail law, which was enacted by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2019 and perpetuated under his successor, current Gov. Kathy Hochul. Cuomo, while campaigning for mayor, has noted the cashless bail law has faced amendments that increased judicial discretion in recent years, but he has defended criminal justice reform broadly as a correction of racial and income inequities.
Adams, who has argued Cuomo-era bail reforms drove up recidivism rates, resulting in offenders repeatedly being arrested and released back on the streets, now faces the former governor in November’s mayoral election. Adams and Cuomo are both independent candidates in the contest, where Democratic socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani is seen as the front-runner after his June primary win. Mamdani has promoted radical initiatives, such as eliminating all cash bail and abolishing prisons.
Under his tenure, Cuomo pushed policies discouraging state agencies from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). While Adams initially defended New York City’s “sanctuary” status, he grew critical of the Biden administration amid surges of illegal immigrants arriving to the Big Apple from the southern border and has more recently cooperated with the Trump administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, on immigration enforcement.
DHS reported last week that ICE officials are facing an 830% increase in assaults in the first six months of Trump’s term compared to the same time period last year.
Illinois, meanwhile, broadly eliminated all cash bail in 2023 with a provision included in law known as the SAFE-T Act. The provision, dubbed the Pretrial Fairness Act, was endorsed by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who argued at the time that “cash bail does not make communities safer” and “has simply exacerbated existing inequities and disparities in the criminal legal system,” according to FOX 32 Chicago.
Former and current Chicago-area police officials recently spoke to FOX 32 condemning the SAFE-T Act, arguing the elimination of cash bail helps criminals and harms police officers.
In Los Angeles County, what’s known as the “Pre-Arraignment Release Protocol (PARP)” took effect in October 2023, eliminating cash bail for most nonviolent offenses. It was met with an initial wave of lawsuits from 12 cities who argued the zero-bail switch jeopardized public safety. The Superior Court of Los Angeles County in March defended the protocol in a report that argued judges can conduct individualized risk assessments based on a suspect’s criminal history, flight risk and offense severity.
