Disaffected Mamdani Allies Press Him For Stricter Rules On Nypd Interactions With Ice

NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing mounting pressure from progressive leaders to enact stricter rules on how the NYPD can interact with federal immigration authorities — the latest sign of a broadening chasm between the mayor and his own supporters.

Attention on the issue intensified Saturday when police officers blocked protesters advancing toward U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who were transporting an immigrant detainee from a Brooklyn hospital. As video of the chaos went viral, accusations that Mamdani’s NYPD had coordinated with ICE — in violation of local sanctuary laws — quickly accumulated. The mayor has rejected the claim.

In a letter to Mamdani, Rep. Nydia Velázquez, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and four other elected Democrats who endorsed the mayor’s 2025 campaign wrote that they believe the NYPD “coordinated on the ground with ICE agents” outside the hospital. And they implored him to immediately overhaul NYPD policies in response.

“Officers arriving at a scene where federal agents are already operating cannot be left to improvise. They need a bright-line rule, communicated up and down the chain of command, that informs them when to disengage, when to step back, when to refuse a request for assistance, and how to document what they observed,” they wrote in the Wednesday letter, which was obtained by POLITICO. “The absence of such a standard, or the failure to enforce one, is how we ended up with NYPD officers visibly working alongside ICE outside a hospital.”

Specifically, they called on Mamdani to release new rules within 30 days that “clearly outline” how NYPD officers should interact with ICE agents in the field. The rules, they wrote, should dictate when “disengagement” and “refusal of assistance” to ICE is appropriate so NYPD officers “do not aid, facilitate, or appear to facilitate civil immigration enforcement.”

Among the letter’s other signatories was state Sen. Julia Salazar, one of the earliest supporters of Mamdani’s 2025 mayoral campaign and a fellow democratic socialist.

The fact that Mamdani’s elected supporters opted to call him out in such a direct way is a strong indication elements of his base are growing frustrated with his handling of public safety issues — and his perceived drift to the political center since entering City Hall.

One way that dissatisfaction has become most apparent is the left’s growing animosity over Mamdani’s decision to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, a politically moderate technocrat who openly disagrees with him on various policy fronts. There are other signs Mamdani’s grip on his base is slipping, including uneasiness in progressive corners about his chummy relationship with President Donald Trump, whose hardline immigration agenda has paved the way for increasingly aggressive ICE tactics across the country.

On the flipside, a more aggressive stance against Trump’s immigration crackdowns could backfire for Mamdani. On Tuesday, Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, said the president’s administration will “flood” New York with ICE agents in response to new immigrant protections state lawmakers are slated to pass this month. Homan could ostensibly ratchet up that pressure even more if Mamdani strikes out on his own to prohibit the NYPD from policing protests like the one at the Brooklyn hospital.

When it comes to what happened in Brooklyn, Salazar and the other politicians behind Wednesday’s letter directly contradicted Mamdani’s version of events.

On Monday, the mayor told reporters there had been “none of that” when asked if there was coordination between ICE and NYPD cops outside the hospital. Rather, the mayor said officers had intervened to perform crowd control during a chaotic protest that had turned violent, a description that aligned with an account provided by the NYPD.

Sam Raskin, a spokesperson for Mamdani, said the mayor’s team is reviewing the Wednesday letter and that the mayor is “committed to upholding New York City’s laws protecting immigrant communities and ensuring there is clear, consistent guidance for how city agencies handle situations involving federal immigration authorities.”

The other signatories on the letter are Assemblymember Maritza Davila and City Councilmembers Sandy Nurse and Jennifer Gutiérrez. With the exception of Davila, everyone who signed it endorsed Mamdani before the June 2025 mayoral primary.

In addition to promulgating new rules, those politicians wrote that Mamdani must order the NYPD to provide training to every police officer in the city to ensure compliance. Whether Mamdani could convince Tisch to go along with such a directive is not entirely clear — especially as she’s rebuffed calls to act on his public safety-related campaign promises, including his push to disband a controversial NYPD unit that responds to protests.

Still, there are unique political considerations at play with the letter to Mamdani.

Velázquez — who’s broadly viewed as a godmother to the city’s progressive movement — is retiring from Congress at the end of this year. Reynoso is running to succeed her and has earned endorsements from the outgoing congresswoman as well as Nurse and Gutiérrez.

Mamdani has endorsed Reynoso’s opponent, Assemblymember Claire Valdez, a fellow democratic socialist. His decision to back Valdez caused Mamdani’s relationship with Velázquez to sour. Since then, she has thrown herself into several other proxy battles against the mayor — despite being an early and vocal Mamdani backer during his campaign last year.

Open questions also remain about what the authors of Wednesday’s missive would like new NYPD rules to actually say.

In a phone interview with POLITICO Thursday morning, Reynoso declined to directly answer that question.

“I truly want to allow for the mayor to answer that because I want to see how the mayor’s office interprets sanctuary city laws,” he said.

Reynoso noted, however, that he is not calling for the NYPD to completely stop policing anti-ICE protests.

“For two hours and 55 minutes, they were doing exactly what we were expecting them to do, which is crowd control, making sure that everyone is safe, no one’s getting hurt,” Reynoso said of Saturday’s incident. “Then, as [the ICE agents] were leaving, there was a full-on coordination between the NYPD and ICE and how they were going to be moving to get through the crowd, to get with the detainee from the hospital to the car — there was obvious, constant communication.”

As a candidate last year, Mamdani promised to be Trump’s “worst nightmare” when it came to fighting back against his administration’s immigration crackdowns. But since his two shockingly cordial White House meetings with the president in November and February, Mamdani has softened his tone, focusing instead on areas where the unlikely pair can collaborate for the betterment of New York.

Behind the scenes, Mamdani’s administration has continued to work on ways to resist the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, though.

As first reported by POLITICO, Mamdani’s team has zeroed in on scrutinizing an NYPD contract with a surveillance technology company that’s also an ICE vendor. The review of the contract is part of a broader audit of how the NYPD and five other city agencies comply with local sanctuary laws, which bar municipal employees and resources from being used to assist in civil immigration enforcement. When he first launched the audit in February, Mamdani said it should come with policy changes aimed at strengthening the department’s compliance — an objective that Raskin, his spokesperson, doubled down on Thursday.

“As a result of that review, agencies will be announcing updated policies and protocols,” Raskin said. “Following the completion of the initial audit and report, agencies are also required to continuously review and update their guidance as needed.”

Reynoso and his five co-signers contend in their letter that policy changes can’t come soon enough after Saturday’s ICE action at the Brooklyn hospital, which is located in a section of Bushwick with large immigrant communities.

“Constituents have communicated their fear and reluctance to seek medical care at Wyckoff Hospital,” they wrote. “Parents are asking whether it is safe to take their children to the emergency room. This unacceptable outcome is a direct consequence of what happened this weekend.”