{"id":72239,"date":"2025-12-16T14:48:41","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T14:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/72239\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T14:48:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T14:48:41","slug":"mamdanis-anti-ice-video-courts-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/72239\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani\u2019s Anti-ICE Video Courts Chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not even in Gracie Mansion yet, New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is once again courting controversy with the release of a recent video<\/a> on federal immigration enforcement operations.<\/p>\n

The top-line theme of the video (\u201cknow your rights\u201d) sounds reasonable enough. What\u2019s wrong with knowing your rights?<\/p>\n

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But in context, the video\u2019s message is far more sinister: an endorsement of resistance to the enforcement of duly enacted federal immigration law, as well as tacit encouragement of chaotic, disruptive, and potentially violent clashes between anti-Trump activists and immigration-enforcement authorities.<\/p>\n

For starters, Mamdani leads with the promise \u201cto protect the rights\u201d of those whom immigration authorities aimed to detain, as if immigration enforcement constitutes some kind of rights violation. That framing is immediately followed by a call to \u201cstand up to [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] ICE.\u201d That may not constitute an explicit call for obstruction, but it comes off as a wink and a nod, once you understand that the video appeared after ICE agents were physically obstructed by a crowd in downtown New York days earlier\u2014an incident Mamdani referenced as the reason for his video.<\/p>\n

The city has already gotten a glimpse of what this activist-driven chaos could look like. Late last month, police arrested<\/a> at least 18 agitators in downtown Manhattan for disorderly conduct and obstructing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicles in an attempt to disrupt an enforcement operation.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, given the Big Apple\u2019s political climate, the anti-ICE rabblerousers were lauded rather than condemned. New York published a glowing profile<\/a> of them and the nonprofit groups that trained and deployed them. New York attorney general Letitia James offered<\/a> support for those arrested in a statement on X. Instead of reprimanding the lawbreakers thwarting federal agents, City Comptroller Brad Lander condemned the NYPD\u2019s restoration of order, calling it<\/a> a violation of New York\u2019s sanctuary city policy.<\/p>\n

Apparently, it\u2019s not enough to refuse cooperation with federal immigration enforcement efforts. To be truly moral, according to some progressive leaders, the city must also turn a blind eye toward those actively hindering enforcement efforts. This encourages activists to escalate their tactics\u2014a recipe for disaster.<\/p>\n

Other cities have shown us just how out of control anti-ICE clashes can get. In Los Angeles last summer, immigration enforcement operations sparked riots. As I pointed out then<\/a>, those riots occurred after local officials\u2014namely, L.A. mayor Karen Bass and California governor Gavin Newsom\u2014primed the pump with incendiary statements like those in Mamdani\u2019s video.<\/p>\n

In Chicago this fall, ICE agents were nearly overrun by angry protesters. Reports<\/a> also circulated that a Chicago police executive, presumably at the direction of Mayor Brandon Johnson, ordered local police not to assist the federal agents who had called for help (a claim local officials disputed).<\/p>\n

And everyone seems already to have forgotten the September sniper attack<\/a> on a Dallas ICE field office that targeted ICE officers but killed two detainees and wounded a third.<\/p>\n

Since President Trump took office, assaults against ICE agents have spiked by more than 1,150 percent, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which attributed<\/a> the surge to anti-ICE rhetoric in \u201csanctuary\u201d jurisdictions. One would expect the next leader of America\u2019s largest city to want to avoid provoking more such violence.<\/p>\n

But Mamdani\u2019s video seems calibrated to unleash more violence, more clashes, and more disorder. That is what he invites by framing the deportation of illegal immigrants as violations of rights and the physical obstruction of federal law enforcement officers as constitutionally protected \u201cprotest.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth remembering that Mamdani, who has previously referred to immigration enforcement actions as kidnappings<\/a> and manifestations of cruelty<\/a>, had to be physically restrained<\/a> by police when border czar Tom Homan visited the state capital.<\/p>\n

A word of warning to the New Yorkers inclined to accept Mamdani\u2019s invitation: by all means, know your rights. But know the rights of others, too\u2014especially those of the silent majority of nonactivists who don\u2019t want their city to descend into even more chaos.<\/p>\n

Rafael A. Mangual<\/a> is the Nick Ohnell fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most.<\/p>\n

Photo by Michael M. Santiago\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

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City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not even in Gracie Mansion yet, New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is once again courting controversy with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-72239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}