Will ICE force Mamdani’s hand on the NYPD?

The ICE shooting of Oscar Belgal in the Bronx last week has galvanized some of the city’s anti-ICE forces, but clashes that followed the shooting have also refocused some attention on the NYPD. City police officers showed up in the aftermath of the incident, in  which Belgal, 28, was wounded while his 5-year-old son rode in the car with him. Some critics of ICE complained that they saw the NYPD as having cooperated with federal agents, including as ICE officers tried to whisk Belgal from the hospital where he’d been taken.

In this case, whether or not the police truly “cooperated” with ICE depends on how you define the term. I’ve gotten into the specifics of NYC’s sanctuary policies in more detail elsewhere, but as a general idea, when a state or locality declares itself to be a “sanctuary” that just means that it will not volunteer information or resources to federal immigration authorities beyond what is already required by law – that is, that they won’t actively cooperate. It doesn’t mean that a jurisdiction will interfere with arrests. Even that standard has some notable carveouts. Like most sanctuary cities, New York will cooperate when ICE presents an order signed by a judge. The city also makes exceptions for people convicted of one of 170 crimes it considers particularly serious. 

Participation, but in what?

In practice, however, opportunities for this kind of official cooperation are exceedingly rare. Instead, the NYPD has found itself in hot water several times in recent years over instances in which officers improperly colluded with federal immigration personnel. 

In the Belgal case, the NYPD has maintained that its officers did not assist ICE in the arrest but were simply responding to the shooting, which seems technically true. We have no indication that police were present at the moment the shooting took place or had any prior knowledge of the operation or ICE’s intentions. Still, the cops on the scene undoubtedly “helped” ICE insofar as they protected agents as protesters descended on the site and then cleared protesters out of the way at the nearby hospital where Belgal was taken. This is inarguably participation, but the question is, in what?

Every time something like this has happened, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and police brass have said that all they were doing was maintaining public safety in the ways that they’ve been trained and are responsible for. For instance, they have cleared demonstrators trying to block a roadway, but keeping roads clear is something they do regardless of the circumstances. The thinking is that whether the targets of an angry group are ICE agents or anyone else, the role of the police is to keep the peace – which generally includes allowing other law enforcement agencies to carry out their official duties. Plus, as a senior state intelligence official told me a few months ago, the worst nightmare would be some instance of “blue on blue” conflict that gets out of control, like NYPD cops getting into a confrontation with ICE agents that ends in either or both groups employing force. You can imagine a scenario where the police engaged with or even attempted to detain a federal agent and the latter resisted or, in a worst case, opened fire. We would be living in a different world afterward, with things spiraling in ways that no one wants except perhaps the White House officials itching for a reason to invoke the Insurrection Act.

From the NYPD’s standpoint, the fastest and least chaotic way of handling ICE operations like this is to just get them away from the scene of any potential clash with the public, which in practice means creating the conditions for ICE to quickly make their arrests and clear out. Of course, many immigration advocates and elected officials respond to this by saying that if we’re in a world of bad choices, allowing masked federal agents to run rampant through city streets, pulling people out of cars and firing long guns feet from a 5-year-old child is not the best one.

What the city can do

As far as what specifically the NYPD could do to actually constrain ICE, I have spent a decent chunk of the last year and a half reporting on this, so I can give you a primer: 

First, while the police can’t legally single out federal immigration agents for scrutiny, they can institute rules that technically apply to everyone but would in practice mostly ensnare ICE. For instance, the city could require that any law enforcement agency conducting operations here have a specific, actionable warrant (even just an administrative one) that lays out who they’re targeting, when and where. No trawling around grabbing people who look Hispanic to check their status. While the Supreme Court has signed off on so-called Kavanaugh stops — in which ICE can check documentation based on factors including appearance — this just means these stops are ruled not unconstitutional; the NYPD could at least make the legal argument that they can constrain some operational aspects as a law enforcement prerogative.

This connects to a more general power. In our federal system, protecting  public order and public safety writ large is the domain of state and local governments. I think the city could make a pretty plausible case that ICE’s tactics are undermining public safety and that it therefore has authority to constrain ICE agents. That’s obviously something that would end up in court, where the sticking point would be that states cannot impede the carrying out of federal law, which is supreme over state law other than where power has specifically been delegated to the states under the Constitution.

The strongest argument the city has for restraining ICE, in my view, is the constitutional one. Federal agents seem to be pretty routinely violating the First Amendment by intimidating and arresting protesters and attempting to impede filming, and the Fourth Amendment by making arrests based on thin or nonexistent probable cause that often boils down to someone’s appearance, type of work or presence in a particular neighborhood. Judges have agreed, ordering thousands of people released on habeas grounds around the country, including some as a result of unlawful arrests. If local police decided to monitor constitutional compliance and restrict ICE from, for example, harassing or detaining demonstrators and community observers, I think it would be more difficult for ICE to push back against what the city could convincingly argue is just its enforcement of the supreme law of the land, the Constitution. Once operations have already happened, I’ve argued that local prosecutors are fully empowered to investigate and charge federal agents in certain cases, and indeed Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark has said her office is opening an inquiry into this shooting.

Pressure mounts on Mamdani

Now, all of these scenarios are premised on the idea that a) Mayor Zohran Mamdani would order these steps, b) Tisch would go along with them and c) cops would meaningfully follow these orders. As I’ve touched on a bit before, Mamdani signaled a calculation when he chose to keep the centrist stalwart Tisch on as commissioner. Many of his left-wing supporters had seen his ascension as the moment when a politician with a more Bill de Blasio-like sensibility around the role of the NYPD but with mass popularity and a resolve that BdB didn’t have could finally move the ball forward after four years of a cop mayor, Eric Adams, who presided over scandal after scandal in the upper echelons of the force.

That was despite the fact that Mamdani had ultimately made only a few muted promises on reform: that he’d get rid of the department’s much-maligned gang database; disband its Strategic Response Group, which had become infamous for heavy-handed tactics against protesters; and expand the use of non-police personnel to respond to certain calls, particularly around mental health-related emergencies. Ultimately, he’s taken a half-hearted stab at the last and shelved the other two points, giving a wide berth to the police, much to the activists’ dismay. This is, I believe, a strategic choice; Mamdani has a very ambitious agenda of which police reform was never a centerpiece. I think he realized early on that locking horns with the famously combative NYPD and its unions would become an all-encompassing distraction that would actively hinder his ability to move the needle on housing, childcare and so on.

It was a gamble that mostly seems to have paid off so far. But it was always going to eventually catch up to him, and now it seems like it finally has; the Belgal shooting has brought simmering tensions to a boil, and  his political and intellectual allies are demanding that he act. That includes Darializa Ávila Chevalier, who rode a Mamdani endorsement to a resounding primary victory over the incumbent of the House seat in Harlem, Adriano Espaillat. She is now demanding the mayor disband the SRG and fire Tisch. Mamdani has said that he has no plans to fire his commissioner, crediting her with helping root out the Adams-era corruption and keeping crime low in the city, a decision that has also helped him keep the support of crucial allies like Gov. Kathy Hochul.

The mayor did announce this week that he’d directed the NYPD to review its use-of-force policies and take up some modest reforms, like limiting how easily officers can retire while a disciplinary process is ongoing. That last is a direct result of the fact that an officer found to have used excessive force in the 2024 killing of Queens teenager Win Rozario was allowed to retire before any consequences could be meted out. The review is an interesting step, but ultimately it will be just that, a review. Whatever it finds, it will be up to a mayor who’s sought to govern pragmatically after campaigning idealistically how to navigate between his base and a blue third rail he has mostly opted not to touch.