Mamdani: Our Anti-ICE Politics Are Working Across the Nation

On Thursday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) discussed his policies opposing ICE and said that “what you’re seeing from Americans across the country is that the very politics we were told could only succeed in New York City is actually succeeding from Astoria to Albuquerque to Allentown, across this country.”

Co-host Willie Geist asked, “Mr. Mayor, I was going to ask you about ICE, because, clearly, listening to voters as they came out of the polls the other night, this was a really important issue. Three-quarters of voters said that this was critical, that the conduct of ICE and the deportation regime of this administration influenced their vote. How are you managing that here in New York City? Because, for the most part, while they’re here, we haven’t seen those ugly scenes in the streets of New York City. What’s the balance you’ve struck with ICE, with the NYPD, with this administration around that?”

Mamdani answered, “Well, I think it continues to be a tension with federal policy, because we’ve made clear to them that we are never going to assist them in civil immigration enforcement. We are not going to be a part of a deportation agenda in the way that they’ve built this administration. And what that means is we don’t allow city property, we don’t allow city agencies to be used in that fashion. We have executive orders we’ve put forward to that end. And we’re also letting businesses know, who own parking lots, that we want them to stop letting those parking lots be the site of where ICE is staging their locations and staging their enforcement, because, again, what we’re talking about is a federal agency that is willing to open fire on a moving car in broad daylight right after school’s let out, right? They’re willing to shoot at somebody, despite the fact that there’s a five-year-old child in that same car. And what you’re seeing from Americans across the country is that the very politics we were told could only succeed in New York City is actually succeeding from Astoria to Albuquerque to Allentown, across this country. And what we’re seeing is that working-class Americans are tired of a corruption of their politics and a corruption of their prices.”

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