Mamdani Posts Spanish-Language Video Coaching New Yorkers on How to Deal With ICE Agents
Photo: Selcuk Acar / Anadolu / Getty
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday released a video in Spanish walking residents through how to handle encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The guidance covers refusing agents entry to private spaces, staying silent under questioning, and tapping into the city’s taxpayer-funded immigration legal services.
“If you encounter ICE, these are your rights,” Mamdani says in the video, which he shared on social media as his administration keeps pushing back against President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement drive. He also restated that local law enforcement will stay out of it, saying, “The city, including local police, do not assist in the enforcement of civil immigration law.”
The video opens with what to do if ICE agents try to enter a private space such as a home, church, hospital, or a non-public area of a workplace. Mamdani tells viewers to check any warrant for the words “United States District Court” and a judge’s signature, and suggests asking agents to pass the document under the door. “If they don’t have a judicial order, you can leave the door closed and say, ‘I do not consent to your entry,’” he says.
For street encounters, the mayor advises people to stay silent and ask, “Am I free to go?” If the answer is yes, he says, they should calmly walk away. He also encourages viewers to speak with a lawyer before signing any papers or making decisions about their immigration cases, and points them to the city’s free, confidential, multilingual immigration legal support line at 1-800-354-0365, or to call 311 and say “immigration legal.”
Mamdani wraps up by citing the right to protest and promising to defend it. “These are very frightening times for many people,” he says. “But as your mayor, I will fight every day to protect, support, and celebrate our communities.”
Republican lawmakers blasted the video, saying it stressed resisting immigration enforcement while never encouraging people to follow federal law. “At no point in this video is anyone urged to abide by the laws of the United States,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) wrote on X. “Because it was not made for the benefit of the people of the United States.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) accused Mamdani of “openly helping illegal aliens evade ICE and undermine the law.” Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY) took aim at the use of city resources, writing, “Today, the socialist mayor is using taxpayer resources to instruct illegals, in Spanish, how to evade accountability.” Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) summed up his reaction in a single word: “Treason.”
The video lands amid rising tension over immigration enforcement in the city. Earlier this month, an ICE officer shot Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old Dominican national, in the neck during an attempted detention in Manhattan. Belgal was treated at a hospital and then taken into federal custody. The Department of Homeland Security said he had a criminal record and had rammed agents’ vehicles with his car as they tried to box him in. Mamdani condemned the shooting and demanded that ICE stop its operations in the city.
Mamdani has repeatedly called for abolishing ICE and has vowed to defend New York’s sanctuary-city policies, which limit when city authorities cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. He has also pressed parking garage and lot operators to keep ICE from using their properties as staging areas.
