Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he is “in support of abolishing” Immigration and Customs Enforcement during an interview on “The View” on Tuesday.
“I am in support of abolishing ICE, and I’ll tell you why,” Mamdani said in response to a question about whether ICE has “any legitimate law enforcement role.”
“What we see is an entity that has no interest in fulfilling its stated reason to exist,” he explained. “We’re seeing a government agency that is supposed to be enforcing some kind of immigration law, but instead what it’s doing is terrorizing people no matter their immigration status, no matter the facts of the law, no matter the facts of the case.”
Mamdani said that he was “tired of waking up every day and seeing a new image of someone being dragged out of their car, dragged out of their home, dragged out of their life. What we need to see is humanity.”
“And there is a way to care about immigration in this city and in this country with a sense of humanity,” Hizzoner continued. “What we’re seeing from ICE is not it, and we have not seen that from them in a long, long time.”
The mayor has been critical of ICE, which has ramped up its enforcement frequency and tactics in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term. ICE officers have increased detentions in New York City, particularly at 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan, where immigrants arrive for routine hearings.
Throughout the past year, ICE agents across the country have worn masks and plain clothes to conceal their identities while conducting raids and arrests, raising questions from top legal brass and elected officials, including Mamdani, about the legality of the operations.
During a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech on Monday, Mamdani raised his concerns about the conduct of ICE, citing “the craven abuses of ICE across this country and also in this city,” saying ICE is targeting immigrant communities.
“They wear masks because they know that what they are doing is wrong,” he said in his speech.
Mamdani himself is an immigrant. He was born in Kampala, Uganda, and came to New York City at the age of nine.
Hundreds of New Yorkers took to the streets in October 2025 after an ICE raid on Canal Street in which officers detained several street vendors, four of whom were United States citizens.
The mayor has condemned the Jan. 7 ICE killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis and reaffirmed New York City’s sanctuary city policies, which ensure that ICE cannot enter schools or city property without a judicial warrant.
“Look, our values and our laws are not bargaining chips. We are proud of them. We are New Yorkers who believe that everyone in the city should be safe,” Mamdani said during a Sunday morning interview with ABC7.
Good’s killing set off protests across the country, including in New York City.
In calling for the abolition of ICE, Mamdani joins a growing contingent of elected officials seeking to abolish the enforcement body. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx/Queens) has called for the abolition of ICE and pushed for drastic funding cuts to the agency on Capitol Hill.
ICE is increasingly unpopular across the country. A recent Associated Press/NORC poll found that 38% of adults support Trump’s handling of immigration in the wake of Good’s killing, down from 49% in March 2025.
A spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
