Mayor Zohran Mamdani mentioned he’s “in support of abolishing” Immigration and Customs Enforcement throughout an interview on “The View” on Tuesday.
Photograph by Lloyd Mitchell
Mayor Zohran Mamdani mentioned he’s “in support of abolishing” Immigration and Customs Enforcement throughout an interview on “The View” on Tuesday.
“I am in support of abolishing ICE, and I’ll tell you why,” Mamdani mentioned in response to a query about whether or not ICE has “any legitimate law enforcement role.”
“What we see is an entity that has no interest in fulfilling its stated reason to exist,” he defined. “We’re seeing a government agency that is supposed to be enforcing some kind of immigration law, but instead what it’s doing is terrorizing people no matter their immigration status, no matter the facts of the law, no matter the facts of the case.”
Mamdani mentioned that he was “tired of waking up every day and seeing a new image of someone being dragged out of their car, dragged out of their home, dragged out of their life. What we need to see is humanity.”
“And there is a way to care about immigration in this city and in this country with a sense of humanity,” Hizzoner continued. “What we’re seeing from ICE is not it, and we have not seen that from them in a long, long time.”
The mayor has been crucial of ICE, which has ramped up its enforcement frequency and ways within the first yr of President Donald Trump’s second time period. ICE officers have elevated detentions in New York Metropolis, significantly at 26 Federal Plaza in decrease Manhattan, the place immigrants arrive for routine hearings.
All through the previous yr, ICE brokers throughout the nation have worn masks and plain garments to hide their identities whereas conducting raids and arrests, elevating questions from high authorized brass and elected officers, together with Mamdani, concerning the legality of the operations.
FILE – A person is yanked via the hallway by an ICE agent at 26 Federal Plaza in 2025.Photograph by Dean Moses
Throughout a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech on Monday, Mamdani raised his issues concerning the conduct of ICE, citing “the craven abuses of ICE across this country and also in this city,” saying ICE is focusing on immigrant communities.
“They wear masks because they know that what they are doing is wrong,” he mentioned in his speech.
Mamdani himself is an immigrant. He was born in Kampala, Uganda, and got here to New York Metropolis on the age of 9.
A whole lot of New Yorkers took to the streets in October 2025 after an ICE raid on Canal Avenue wherein officers detained a number of road distributors, 4 of whom had been United States residents.
The mayor has condemned the Jan. 7 ICE killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis and reaffirmed New York Metropolis’s sanctuary metropolis insurance policies, which be certain that ICE can’t enter faculties or metropolis property with out a judicial warrant.
“Look, our values and our laws are not bargaining chips. We are proud of them. We are New Yorkers who believe that everyone in the city should be safe,” Mamdani mentioned throughout a Sunday morning interview with ABC7.
Good’s killing set off protests throughout the nation, together with in New York Metropolis.
In calling for the abolition of ICE, Mamdani joins a rising contingent of elected officers looking for to abolish the enforcement physique. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx/Queens) has referred to as for the abolition of ICE and pushed for drastic funding cuts to the company on Capitol Hill.
ICE is more and more unpopular throughout the nation. A latest Related Press/NORC ballot discovered that 38% of adults help Trump’s dealing with of immigration within the wake of Good’s killing, down from 49% in March 2025.
A spokesperson from the Division of Homeland Safety didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
