During an interview aired on Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” New York City mayoral candidate Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (D) said that he wouldn’t allow the NYPD to cooperate with the federal government on civil immigration enforcement and that city law allows coordination for certain crimes, but beyond those crimes, “that is something for the NYPD to focus on purely right here in New York City.”
Host Anderson Cooper asked, “So, what do you do if he decides to — we already saw there was an ICE action on Canal Street. They said they were targeting undocumented immigrants who were selling counterfeit bags, which, on Canal Street, is kind of — there’s a long history of that, obviously. What do you do?”
Mamdani responded, “I think this is an example of what is unacceptable in this country. I think the first thing that you do is you close the door that Eric Adams opened to the NYPD doing civil immigration enforcement. He said that on national television. The second thing you do –.”
Cooper then cut in to ask, “So, you would not allow the New York Police Department to engage or to cooperate with ICE or DHS?”
Mamdani answered, “Not in civil immigration enforcement. We have sanctuary city laws where we’ve made very, very clear that, for a set of serious crimes, there is coordination with the federal administration. But anything beyond that, beyond that, I think, 172 crimes that are listed, that is something for the NYPD to focus on purely right here in New York City.”
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