The largest sanctuary city that defies federal immigration laws is the Big Apple in New York. Its newly elected socialist Indian-Ugandan mayor, Zohran Mamdani, just issued his 13th Executive Order, which forbids city agencies from sharing information with federal officials including the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), except as may be required by law.
“ICE is more than a rogue agency — it is a manifestation of the abuse of power,” Mamdani pompously declared. New York is currently holding 7,113 criminal illegal aliens for whom detainers have been issued by federal officials to deport them, yet Mamdani is not cooperating to turn these lawbreakers over to ICE.
Mamdani and other big city Democrat mayors are the ones most responsible for the delays in removing the criminals who never should have been here in the first place. Mamdani has prohibited ICE from entering any city property, which includes parking garages, schools, shelters, public spaces, hospitals, and absurdly even vacant lots, unless ICE has a warrant which is difficult to obtain from liberal judges.
The sanctuary policy in New York City is so strict that it prevents the police from sharing information with ICE about illegal aliens who have been arrested. New York City prohibits transferring these criminals into the custody of federal officials.
Last July the Trump Administration sued New York City officials to end their sanctuary city policy, and to enjoin local administrative regulations that interfere with the apprehension and deportation of criminals. But this lawsuit languishes before the Biden-appointed Judge Ramon Reyes in the Eastern District of New York, without a ruling that could then be appealed.
Mamdani is anticipating the arrival of ICE agents similar to the crackdown on illegal aliens that has been occurring in Minneapolis. But rather than cooperate with law enforcement, Mamdani is ramping up his resistance by creating an “Interagency Response Committee” to oppose Trump’s valiant efforts.
This committee will include the city’s chief immigration officer, the first deputy mayor, the city’s chief counsel, and senior operations managers representing all city agencies. Mamdani is commanding several of the agencies, including those overseeing its jails, to conduct an audit of their compliance with the city’s sanctuary policies against cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
“When politicians bar local law enforcement from working with DHS, our law enforcement officers have to have a more visible presence so that we can find and apprehend the criminals let out of jails and back into communities,” DHS stated through a spokesman.
Resisting immigration laws is an odd priority for Mamdani during his first two months in office, when he’s done a terrible job addressing a snowstorm and cold snap. Keeping the streets clean and residents warm should be Mamdani’s focus, rather than obstructing the deportation program on which Trump was elected.
Since January 24, 18 people have been discovered frozen to death outside in New York City. Last December, its former Mayor Eric Adams sharply criticized Mamdani’s plan to be more permissive toward homelessness, and now many homeless people are freezing to death because they are not in shelters.
“They don’t believe there should be any prisons in our city. They don’t believe that you should do encampment enforcement. … They believe in decriminalizing prostitution after all that we’ve done,” Adams said in his rebuke of Mamdani and his agenda.
Mamdani’s plan has been to allow scores of homeless people to camp out on the streets in New York City. “I went and visited those camps — stale food, human waste, drug paraphernalia, schizophrenic behavior,” Adams observed.
Mamdani’s most recent response has been to arrange for heating buses to be placed in various locations in the city, but people are reportedly having a hard time finding them. Often, they are not where people expect them to be.
Meanwhile, huge piles of garbage have been stacking up uncollected for weeks on New York City streets. Television news programs have posted videos of mountains of garbage-filled bags, along with interviews of residents outraged at how the city officials have failed to do their job of removing trash that is blocking sidewalks and attracting rats.
A heating crisis caused a record-breaking 80,000 New Yorkers to place emergency calls to 311 in January due to a lack of residential heat and hot water. As sub-zero temperatures descended on the Big Apple — whatever happened to global warming? — many were nearly frozen in their apartments because of these energy failures.
Across the country in California, there is some good news as a federal judge struck down Gov. Newsom’s law requiring ICE agents to work without masks that protect them against retaliation. The judge pointed out that this law unfairly targeted federal agents, and that it was unconstitutional because it did not also apply to California officials.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.