Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order reaffirming New York City’s sanctuary protections and launched a citywide “Know Your Rights” campaign, his administration announced February 6, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement escalated detention and enforcement operations across the city and surrounding region. The order, announced at the first annual Interfaith Breakfast of his administration before what the mayor’s office said were nearly 400 faith and community leaders, came amid a months-long confrontation between local officials and federal immigration authorities that has run from Lower Manhattan courthouses to the Hudson River waterfront.
According to the mayor’s office, the executive order protects the privacy and data of immigrants and all residents, bolsters restrictions on federal immigration enforcement on city property, initiates an audit to confirm city agencies are complying with sanctuary laws, and establishes a committee to coordinate crisis response across city government in the event of escalating federal immigration actions. Independent coverage noted the order also requires ICE agents to obtain judicial warrants before enforcement on city property, part of what CBS New York described as protections against “abusive immigration enforcement.” The administration said its “Know Your Rights” push would distribute nearly 32,000 multilingual flyers and booklets to faith institutions across the city. “As ICE fosters a culture of suspicion and fear, let this city of strangers set an example for how to make the sorrows of others our own,” Mamdani said, according to the release. “Let us offer a new path — one of defiance through compassion.” Make the Road New York, the immigrant-rights group, issued a statement commending the mayor’s action to protect New Yorkers.
The mayor’s order followed a sharp expansion of federal detention infrastructure in and around the region. Envision Freedom Fund said February 5 that new reports showed federal immigration officials scouting warehouses across New Jersey and New York to dramatically expand detention capacity, with facilities planned for Roxbury, New Jersey, and Chester, New York. The organization said ICE had already spent more than $189 million purchasing warehouse facilities in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and that local officials have warned they have limited power to block federal detention facilities because such sites are exempt from zoning regulations. Rosa Santana, identified by the group as its executive director, said in a statement that the fund had “answered hundreds of calls from people trapped inside ICE detention facilities,” describing accounts of “medical neglect, inedible food, freezing temperatures, and incredible trauma.” Santana called 2025 “the deadliest year on record for ICE detention,” citing more than 30 deaths, including that of Jean Wilson Brutus at Delaney Hall in New Jersey, where the group said 12 emergency 911 calls were made in just three months.
The fund noted that, as part of growing opposition, Gov. Kathy Hochul has introduced legislation to bar police departments from formal agreements with ICE and that state Attorney General Letitia James announced a legal observer team to monitor enforcement operations.
Inside the city, scrutiny centered on 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, the federal building that houses immigration courts and ICE offices. The City reported that ICE had moved detainees to a previously undisclosed floor of the building, and the nonprofit newsroom said February 13 that its reporting on conditions there had been cited in a new indictment. Make the Road New York said in advisories May 27 that a federal court trial was set to begin in a lawsuit challenging what the group described as constitutional violations at 26 Federal Plaza. The City separately reported, in a December dispatch, on immigrants it described as trapped in hotel rooms by ICE.
Enforcement conduct at city courthouses drove a confrontation in late May. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who is running for Congress, called an emergency press conference at 26 Federal Plaza for May 21, his campaign said, citing what it called ICE’s “flagrant violation of a federal court order barring arrests at NYC courthouses.” Reynoso said he would condemn the agency’s actions and unveil a plan to, in the campaign’s words, “dismantle, investigate, and rebuild after ICE.” The campaign said he was joined by Make the Road Action New York and immigrant activists and community leaders, and it streamed the event live.
The waterfront became another flashpoint. Hell Gate reported February 10 that, at a public meeting the night before, Hudson River Park Trust leaders “dodged, deflected, and even laughed off” questions about the trust’s ongoing contract with ICE that allows federal agents to park vans at Pier 40, a public venue where dozens of local teams play soccer. The outlet said it had broken the news three weeks earlier that the trust, which manages parkland from Battery Place to West 59th Street, took nearly $170,000 from the Department of Homeland Security last year in exchange for parking spots. THE CITY reported that its reporters had observed white passenger vans with Maryland plates, tinted windows and caged enclosures around the back seats at the pier.
Elected officials moved to answer the federal escalation with state-level measures. Assemblymember Alex Bores said February 11 that he had introduced a legislative package designed to strip state-funded benefits and legal protections from federal immigration agents who carry out what he called discriminatory and illegal enforcement actions, a response, his office said, to expanded ICE operations and a recent Supreme Court decision that civil rights advocates argue authorizes racial profiling. “ICE is targeting New Yorkers based on nothing more than where they work, the language they speak, or the color of their skin,” Bores said in the release. “These bills send a clear message: New York will not allow the tearing apart of our communities, and we will not reward those doing so by giving them preferential access to state jobs and services.” The cornerstone of the package, his office said, would bar ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations personnel who participated in mass detention operations after January 20, 2025, from accessing the state’s “We Want You” campaign and NY HELPS program for displaced federal workers, including expedited hiring, civil service exam fee waivers and related placement assistance, with limited discretion for the Civil Service Commission to grant exceptions.
Advocates also pressed Albany directly. Make the Road New York said in advisories that hundreds of New Yorkers would travel to the capital to demand statewide protections and to urge the governor and legislators to deliver what the group called bold action for immigrant communities.
The human cost of the federal campaign drew unions into the streets. AFGE Local 3911 said it would join roughly 40 partner unions and local organizations on January 29 for a vigil honoring Alex Pretti, a Department of Veterans Affairs ICU nurse and member of AFGE Local 3659 whom the union said was killed January 24 in Minneapolis. The union said federal agents “beat him to the ground and shot him 10 times for filming ICE in defense of his community and helping a pepper sprayed woman,” and it said his parents had denounced what it described as the Trump administration’s claims that Pretti was a domestic terrorist and violent agitator. Independent accounts reported that agents fired 10 shots in five seconds and that video evidence showed Pretti holding only his phone, contradicting administration claims that he was a “domestic terrorist.” The vigil, held at the VA NY Harbor Health Care System on East 23rd Street, was set to feature nurses’ union leaders including New York State Nurses Association President Nancy Hagans and representatives of National Nurses United, the union said, demanding what it called an end to ICE’s terror campaign.
The civic and advocacy response extended further. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams co-hosted a Fordham University forum titled “Criminalizing Compassion: Upholding Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Immigration Practice,” his office said in his February 6 public schedule. The NYC chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America convened a mass call in late January it billed as a discussion of how socialists would abolish ICE. Together, the actions traced a city and state increasingly mobilized against a federal immigration apparatus expanding its footprint across New York.
