The Justice Department on Thursday sued Mayor Eric Adams, claiming that New York City’s immigration policies are hindering the Trump administration’s enforcement of the law, in an escalation of efforts to crack down on the country’s largest sanctuary city.

In a 37-page lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, the Trump administration said the city’s policies had violated the supremacy clause of the Constitution, which it said gives the administration “well-established, pre-eminent and pre-emptive authority to regulate immigration.”

“New York City has long been at the vanguard of interfering with enforcing this country’s immigration laws,” the administration said in its suit. “Its history as a sanctuary city dates back to 1989, and its efforts to thwart federal immigration enforcement have only intensified since.”

In 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed bills into law that all but stopped the police and jail officials from helping federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deport undocumented immigrants.

The law expelled ICE from offices it had maintained at the Rikers Island jail complex and strictly limited the communication allowed between ICE and the city’s Department of Correction.

The measures also restricted city agencies from honoring ICE’s requests to detain undocumented immigrants who had been charged with crimes so that they could be deported. Under the law, the city could honor requests to detain only those who had been convicted of “violent or serious” crimes — a list of more than 170 offenses that includes rape and murder. ICE also now had to present a warrant signed by a federal judge with each request.

Efforts to reach New York officials on Thursday afternoon were not immediately successful.

This is a developing story and will be updated.