Overview
- New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani posted a video instructing residents, including undocumented immigrants, on their legal rights during ICE encounters.
- He outlined that agents need a judicial warrant to enter private homes, schools, or nonpublic workplace areas, and that people may refuse entry, remain silent, ask “Am I free to go?”, and film without interfering.
- The guidance came days after an ICE operation near Canal Street in Chinatown that drew protests, with reports that demonstrators blocked officers from leaving a parking garage.
- Mamdani pledged to protect the city’s roughly 3 million immigrants and to defend New Yorkers’ constitutional right to protest, noting he takes office on January 1.
- Critics on the right accused him of encouraging noncompliance, while experts quoted in coverage cautioned that a mayor cannot stop federal ICE operations; Mamdani met with President Trump weeks earlier in a cordial Oval Office visit.