Rikers Island, a present-day protest and a link to NYC’s ‘Kidnapping Club’ past

Nearly 200 years ago, Richard Riker — a powerful judge whose family the island is named after — was at the center of a network that included city officials, police officers and others who captured Black New Yorkers, purportedly fugitive enslaved people, and delivered them to Southern slave owners, according to historians.

Mack was detained on Rikers Island in 1992 and 1993 and is now the co-founder and co-director of Freedom Agenda, which works with people affected by incarceration. On Feb. 14, he told the crowd that Adams’ proposal to bring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents back to Rikers would put Black and Latino immigrants in enforcement agents' crosshairs and was on par with Richard Riker’s harmful actions.

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