A masked ICE agent in 26 Federal Plaza on July 22, 2025.
Picture by Lloyd Mitchell
Over the weekend, an off-duty Border Patrol agent visiting Fort Washington Park in Manhattan was shot within the face in an obvious tried theft. The agent, who fortunately survived the encounter, managed to shoot his attacker, who was later taken into custody by police.
Police later revealed that the suspect within the brazen taking pictures, recognized as 21-year-old Miguel Mora, had been needed on expenses in two different incidents: a theft in December 2024 and a felony assault in January 2025. Mora additionally occurs to be an undocumented resident; hailing from the Dominican Republic, federal officers and the NYPD mentioned he illegally crossed the border into Arizona from Mexico in 2023.
Two days after the taking pictures, Secretary of Homeland Safety Kristi Noem and Border Czar Tom Homan got here to Manhattan to vow that extra ICE brokers had been on the best way to do the job that they imagine town can’t: Defend the folks.
The details, in fact, are that town is secure and protects New Yorkers each day. Crime has fallen month after month beneath the course of Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, each of whom deserve credit score for his or her zero-tolerance efforts.
Make no mistake: There’s zero motive why somebody like Mora — with a violent prison document to his identify — ought to stay in the US in the event that they got here right here beneath unlawful pretenses.
That ought to be the only real focus of ICE’s operation: Rounding up the “bad guys” confirmed to have injured and endangered all New Yorkers and Individuals.
However as we all know from our months of protection at immigration court docket in Decrease Manhattan, ICE is not only rounding up the dangerous guys. They’re taking undocumented college students and dealing individuals who obey court docket orders and present up for mandated hearings, who haven’t any blemish to their data aside from they occur to be in New York Metropolis with out correct documentation.
We once more keep that having ICE proceed to troll courtroom hallways or streets and seize people who haven’t any severe prison data undermines ICE’s core mission to defend the nation’s homeland safety, and instills worry into individuals who simply wish to work and reside in peace on this land of alternative.
ICE ought to concentrate on catching the dangerous guys, interval.
As an alternative of roaming the halls of immigration court docket in masks and physique armor to take in any other case harmless folks away, they should be working cooperatively with state and native regulation enforcement to get undocumented criminals off the streets of our metropolis. They need to adhere to due means of regulation, comply with the Structure and be clear about their actions.
That’s the path to attaining justice in New York — not intimidation techniques or scapegoating elected officers.
