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New York City<\/span> Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing a firestorm over how his administration handles policing and responds to federal immigration raids after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer<\/a> shot 28-year-old father Oscar Belgal in front of his 5-year-old child in Manhattan<\/a> on Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Outraged New Yorkers poured into the streets Thursday night and soon clashed with the New York City Police Department, inflaming a perennial point of tension for the city\u2019s socialist mayor. Mamdani has faced criticism from his left for neglecting to pursue aggressive reforms of the NYPD and distrust from his right for having vowed to rein in the department. Now, as residents recover from the latest in a string of violent episodes<\/a> in President Donald Trump\u2019s war on immigrants, Mamdani is tasked with shielding his city from ICE and controlling his local police.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that ICE is rotten to its core,\u201d Mamdani said Thursday night, standing side-by-side with NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, a holdover from the Adams administration known for pushing to expand the department\u2019s sweeping <\/a>surveillance apparatus<\/a>. While Mamdani has made his disdain for ICE clear, his detractors argue the mayor must do more than deliver harsh words.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mamdani\u2019s rhetoric marks \u201ca great first step,\u201d said Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition. \u201cBut what is the city going to do other than deliver that? What are the actionable ideas that they\u2019re planning? That\u2019s the piece that we need to be pushing more on hearing about, because we\u2019re gonna keep being in the same situation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Legally, there isn\u2019t much Mamdani can do to keep federal immigration agents out of the city. Despite the steps he\u2019s taken to curtail their access to city property<\/a> or stop the federal government from illegally accessing New Yorkers\u2019 private data, Trump and the federal agencies sending ICE to New York are the only ones who could actually stop them from coming.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Mamdani\u2019s administration could make it harder for ICE to operate in New York by exerting more control over the NYPD, immigration advocates argue. The department later showed up at the protests on Thursday night, and rapid response activists at the scene alleged its officers were speaking with agents from Homeland Security Investigations, which they viewed as evidence of coordination.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pete Gizas, director of the White House National Security Council and Homeland Security Investigations New York Acting Special Agent in Charge, was at the scene liaising directly with NYPD personnel, according to two rapid responders who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation from law enforcement agencies.\u00a0<\/p>\n One rapid responder said Gizas was there for hours, \u201cspeaking directly to both NYPD and federal personnel. He had HSI officers in his immediate area going door to door, getting into apartment buildings.\u201d Another witness confirmed that they\u2019d seen Gizas interacting with the police.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhy is a crime scene, a shooting scene, being presided over by Homeland Security Investigations?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cIf NYPD is in fact an agency that is controlled by the mayor of New York and by the people of New York, then why is a crime scene, a shooting scene, being presided over by Homeland Security Investigations?\u201d said the first rapid responder, who added that they\u2019d seen members of the ICE investigative unit going in and out of the local NYPD precinct.\u00a0<\/p>\n The NYPD doesn\u2019t have an official partnership with ICE, which would be prohibited by sanctuary city laws and a state law passed<\/a> in August. But the department has been notified<\/a> of ICE activity in the city and shares information like fingerprints<\/a> with federal agencies, which in turn shares that information with ICE.\u00a0<\/p>\n Awawdeh said even if the police aren\u2019t helping ICE detain people, they\u2019re still helping them move freely around the city and carry out their operations.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ll not cooperate or work with ICE on immigration enforcement, but then when they do crowd control, it does end up becoming collusion because then you\u2019re still helping them do the thing you\u2019re not supposed to be doing,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n ICE directed questions about Gizas being at the scene to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement, an NYPD spokesperson said, \u201cThe NYPD does not conduct civil immigration enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n Mamdani has already faced a barrage of criticism<\/a> for his abandonment of several police reform promises he made on the campaign trail. Advocates want him to get rid of Tisch, who is widely associated with the \u201ctough-on-crime\u201d tenure of former Mayor Eric Adams<\/a>, and disband a controversial unit often deployed to protests<\/a> known as the Strategic Response Group. (Mamdani has said<\/a> he still wants to disband the unit but has not provided a plan or a timeline to do so. His office and an NYPD spokesperson told The Intercept that the unit was not deployed on Thursday.)<\/p>\n According to eyewitness accounts and footage of the protests shared on social media, NYPD officers pushed demonstrators, including knocking down Democratic congressional nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier. But there don\u2019t appear to have been mass arrests. In a statement to The Intercept, an NYPD spokesperson said the agency arrested five people at the protests and issued them tickets to appear at the precinct.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing both the shock of ICE\u2019s violence, but we\u2019re also seeing this aggressive treatment of the protesters and of the response to people who are speaking out,\u201d said Yasmine Farhang, executive director of the Immigrant Defense Project.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a statement to The Intercept, a spokesperson for Mamdani\u2019s office called the ICE shooting \u201cheinous\u201d and said it \u201cunderscores the dangers that ICE operations create in our communities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Mayor and the NYPD will review all of the events of the last 24 hours,\u201d the spokesperson said, \u201cincluding ICE\u2019s shooting; the Police Department\u2019s response to that incident and the ensuing protest; the staging of ICE operations in privately-owned parking lots; and every action the City can take to protect New Yorkers from ICE\u2019s terror.\u201d<\/p>\n Mamdani\u2019s strongest political base of support has directed its ire at Tisch, not the mayor. In a statement from the NYC chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, whose organizing operation<\/a> helped one of its own get elected mayor, the group called for Tisch\u2019s firing<\/a> and condemned the NYPD without mentioning Mamdani by name.\u00a0<\/p>\n Asked why Mamdani didn\u2019t just direct the NYPD not to respond to protests, NYC-DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo said the group hadn\u2019t yet been in touch with City Hall but that the police response fell on Tisch, who read out Belgal\u2019s criminal record at her appearance with Mamdani Thursday night. Gordillo also said it was time for the mayor to move forward on campaign promises like disbanding the Strategic Response Group, although the unit wasn\u2019t at Thursday\u2019s protests.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe mayor and we all agree that ICE is not making New Yorkers safer. Democratic socialists have to defeat Trump if we want to abolish ICE,\u201d Gordillo said, pointing to the seven DSA members likely heading to Congress next session, including Avila Chevalier<\/a>. \u201cThe mayor helped us elect several of those people. That\u2019s really the top priority. Because until the federal government changes, the tools that we have in New York City are pretty limited.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In an interview about Mamdani\u2019s policing policies earlier this month, Gordillo\u2019s co-chair, Grace Mausser, said<\/a> the group was being careful about how it was approaching pushing Mamdani to do more on police reform while balancing the political risks. In light of the shooting, Gordillo said, there may be an opportunity to up the pressure.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s an opening among the public right now that means we can harness public anger and public support to make changes for the better in the NYPD in a way that maybe felt harder a few weeks ago,\u201d Gordillo said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Farhang said she welcomed Mamdani\u2019s pledge to demand that Trump end all ICE enforcement operations in New York City, but there are other, less obvious ways to end local collaboration with ICE.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople justifiably are focused on the role of the NYPD at the site of a protest, and those are important conversations,\u201d Farhang said. \u201cBut every single day, we know that the Department of Corrections, the Department of Probation, and also yes, the NYPD, they are continuing to communicate and collaborate with ICE.\u201d<\/p>\n City Council officials recently reintroduced two bills<\/a> that would limit that sort of cooperation. They\u2019d been sitting \u201cfor years,\u201d Farhang said. Now, she added, with so many people \u201cunequivocally saying that ICE is an agency whose mission is squarely to terrorize communities, and that there\u2019s no bounds to their violence, we ask people to take that next step and say, if that\u2019s the case, there is no justification for collaboration at all.\u201d<\/p>\n ICE has surged operations in cities around the country, particularly targeting blue cities with so-called sanctuary city laws that strengthen protections for immigrants.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis surge that\u2019s happening in New York City is happening all across the country. In California, in Illinois, in anti-sanctuary states as well,\u201d said Naureen Shah<\/a>, who leads immigration policy and advocacy at the American Civil Liberties Union. \u201cSo for any community that\u2019s bracing for or experiencing a law enforcement surge, it is really vital that police departments are not providing cooperation to the street arrests, either formally or informally.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Cities and states can\u2019t stop ICE from doing federal law enforcement, Shah added. But, she said, \u201cthey can hold officials accountable for the abuses they commit.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
The Socialist Stance<\/h2>\n