New York City socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose hostility to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been well-documented, slammed the Trump administration’s decision to deploy ICE agents to some airports as staffing shortages resulting from a partial government shutdown continue.
Mamdani, a vocal critic of Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts, took to social media on Tuesday, saying “ICE doesn’t belong at our airports,” while simultaneously directing illegal immigrants to a municipal “legal hotline” to help them with “updated guidance.”
ICE doesn’t belong at our airports.
Our Office of Immigrant Affairs has updated guidance and you can call their legal hotline at 800-354-0365. https://t.co/D5LW8FEwyq
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) March 24, 2026
For Mamdani, the presence of ICE isn’t about security; it’s about “terrorizing” people. He has called for abolishing ICE, describing it as a “rogue agency” with “no interest in laws,” apparently oblivious to the irony that his own administration’s “sanctuary” posturing is the ultimate defiance of law and order.
In 2025, he stated that ICE was “a rogue agency, one that has no interest in laws, no interest in order.”
Appearing on CNN in January, Mamdani lamented the “heightened sense of anxiety and fear” felt by New Yorkers, describing the deployment of law enforcement as “cruel and inhumane.”
While Mamdani has played the role of the aggrieved activist, border czar Tom Homan provided the cold, hard dose of reality. With the TSA hobbled by a DHS shutdown, Homan explained that ICE agents — highly trained law enforcement professionals — are stepping in to fill the gaps, guarding exits and managing security lines so the remaining TSA staff can focus on specialized screening. When pressed on whether ICE would still be performing its primary mission while at the airport, Homan was refreshingly blunt: “We do immigration enforcement at airports all the time … it’s not going to change.”
Predictably, the left-wing establishment trotted out John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE director under President Obama. Sandweg railed against the move, claiming TSA agents have to be “highly skilled” and undergo extensive training, bloviating, “Although ICE agents have tremendous law enforcement experience, they’re not — they can’t step in and run the X-ray or conduct one of those pat-down searches, or even do the baggage inspection that happens behind the scenes,” he said.
Ultimately, Mamdani’s hostility toward ICE isn’t about airport efficiency or “public safety.” It is about a fundamental rejection of the idea that a nation-state has the right to monitor its own points of entry. While Homan works to keep the lines moving and the borders secure, Mamdani remains committed to a radical ideology that prioritizes political posturing over the safety of the city he supposedly leads.
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