WINTRY MIX: The Knicks ticker-tape parade. World Cup festivities. Pride Month. America 250. The Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce wedding.
It’s all happening this summer in New York City — and those events and more may coincide with a surge in federal immigration enforcement at the direction of President Donald Trump’s administration.
The convergence of events as an ICE crackdown looms has not gone unnoticed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and immigrant-rights advocates who are already bracing for a hectic summer in the city.
Hochul last week warned that a surge would “create chaos” especially as the World Cup was getting underway. The mayor told reporters earlier today that the city — and especially the NYPD — is prepared to handle the uncertainty.
“We are the biggest city in the country,” Mamdani said at a press conference in Queens. “We are used to big events, and we are incredibly excited for this one.”
Yet the potential operation — teased repeatedly by Trump border czar Tom Homan — adds a different dimension to the center-of-the-world festivities and celebratory atmosphere that’s pervasive in New York at the moment.
“We’ve just had a lot of practice with being in the streets — thankfully celebrating,” said state Sen. Pat Fahy, a Democrat. “It’s New York. People are not going to tolerate any type of surge here.”
Homan has insisted the federal government’s New York campaign will be much different than the Minneapolis crackdown six months ago, which ultimately led to civil unrest and the deaths of two U.S. citizens.
He told SiriusXM’s Chris Cuomo last week that federal immigration agents would take a refined, precision-based approach.
“Every day we leave the office and we know exactly who we’re looking for, more likely where we will find them, because we have a targeted operation,” Homan said. “We have a folder on each target. It’s not gonna be driving around looking for people that we have no idea who we’re looking for. It’s gonna be a well-planned, targeted operation.”
Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign led Hochul and the Democratic-led Legislature this year to approve a package of measures meant to protect undocumented immigrants.
Law enforcement officers are banned from wearing masks, federal immigration authorities cannot execute civil deportation warrants in so-called sensitive locations like houses of worship, and the state moved to end cooperative agreements between local police and ICE.
“We’re much better prepared as a result of that legislation,” Fahy said. “We’ve sent a very clear and strong message that ICE is not welcome.”
It’s those very same laws, though, that stoked Homan’s plans to focus on New York. He’s warned that, without cooperation with local law enforcement, ICE will need to take a much more expansive approach to deportations.
It’s all led immigration advocates to ready communities for an unpredictable summer.
“New Yorkers are going to stand up for their neighbors,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition. “You’re going to see local communities organizing more, potentially protests, people standing up for New York and New Yorkers. This is an attack on all 19 million New Yorkers.” — Nick Reisman with Gelila Negesse
FROM CITY HALL
POLICING PARTY CITY: Days after being sworn in as mayor, Mamdani declared that his promise to abolish the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group wasn’t up for debate.
“We need to disband the SRG,” he said on Jan. 28 after the unit had been involved in arresting anti-ICE protesters. “I’m currently in conversations with the police commissioner about the ways in which we do so that are operational.”
Six months later, the SRG remains intact — and Mamdani is singing a very different tune.
When asked today if it was appropriate for the police department to deploy the SRG in response to the chaos following the Knicks’ NBA Finals victory, the mayor had this to say: “The NYPD handled themselves appropriately in delivering safety across the five boroughs.”
Mamdani told reporters he remains committed to the idea of “decoupling” the SRG’s protest responsibilities from its counterterrorism duties and that he continues to talk with his NYPD commissioner, Jessica Tisch, about how “to disband SRG to ensure that we have responses to each.” He did not give a timeline for how soon that could happen or elaborate on the nature of the holdup, though.
Mamdani’s thumbs up for the SRG’s response to Saturday’s Midtown mayhem speaks to the awkward terrain he’s navigating as his more politically moderate police commissioner continues to reject his push for breaking up the unit.
Tisch, in fact, has continued to publicly and privately praise the SRG as a critical tool in the NYPD toolbox. On Sunday, she gave members of the unit a salute in a department-wide email thanking officers for their work the night before, when frenzied Knicks fans set fire to or destroyed several school buses in Midtown, smashed NYPD vehicles with bats and even fired shots in Times Square, wounding a 17-year-old.
“You managed to meet the challenges that came with one of the most closely watched periods this city has seen in years,” Tisch wrote in the email obtained by Playbook that included a shoutout to those engaged in “SRG disorder-control response.”
While pushing for breaking up the SRG as a mayoral candidate last year, Mamdani noted the unit’s members face disproportionately high rates of misconduct claims, especially as it relates to violating protesters’ First Amendment rights.
In dragging his feet on the SRG issue, Mamdani has put himself at odds with his own political base.
The local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America issued a rare public rebuke of the mayor Friday for not making good on his campaign pledge to eliminate the SRG.
The DSA’s statement also knocked Mamdani for not fulfilling a separate campaign pledge to abolish the NYPD’s gang database (which critics say is a “drag net” for young Black and Latino New Yorkers, but which Tisch touts as a necessity). On top of that, the DSA — Mamdani’s “political home” — also took aim at him for supporting an increase to the NYPD’s uniformed headcount this year despite having promised as a candidate to keep it flat. — Gelila Negesse and Chris Sommerfeldt
From the Capitol
GUN BILL SURVIVES: The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a New York law aimed at opening up gun companies to civil liability suits.
Federal law has made the firearms industry generally immune to lawsuits since 2005. But state Sen. Zellnor Myrie proposed a workaround in 2021, authoring a statute to expand New York’s ability to sue manufacturers and dealers whose “reckless” actions endanger public safety.
The law that passed was quickly challenged by the gun industry. A series of lower courts have upheld the law in recent years, and the Supreme Court has now decided it won’t consider an appeal.
“For New Yorkers and residents of the ten other states that have adopted similar laws — covering close to 117 million Americans — this serves as affirmation for victims, survivors, and communities across the nation that live with the realities of gun violence on a daily basis,” Myrie said in a statement. “We are not helpless. Gun violence is not inevitable.” — Bill Mahoney
IN OTHER NEWS
— ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: Progressives Champions PAC, which has spent nearly $400,000 in attack ads against NY-17 Democratic candidate Cait Conley, is reportedly funded by Republican groups. (Popular Information)
— MAKE IT MAKE CENTS: Mamdani’s administration will no longer delay billions of dollars in repayments to contracted nonprofits. (NBC New York)
— INSURANCE SCRAMBLE: Federal cuts will leave 450,000 New Yorkers enrolled in the state’s Essential Plan without healthcare coverage beginning next month. (New York Focus)
Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.
