Political Whisperer
By Robert Hornak
The effort by New York to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement from doing its job has taken a somewhat bizarre turn.
Albany pols recently passed a set of anti-ICE laws that in part try to prevent localities from cooperating with the federal agency or helping in any way with their mission, and many locals are giving these unprecedented rules a chilly reception.
Gov. Hochul, Mayor Mamdani, and their allies have long been talking out of both sides of their mouths, claiming to want to go after violent criminals but doing everything in their power to thwart these efforts.
Now the double talk has ended, and they are hoping to not only have state and city authorities try to stymie ICE enforcement efforts but are now trying to force all county and local authorities to do so as well.
The problem is that many local authorities agree with ICE’s mission, want to help, and also don’t believe they should be undermining federal law. They aren’t interested in validating the grievances of NY’s city and state elected socialists and their apparatchiks.
Hochul and her allies try to paint this as an issue solely of civil enforcement, claiming they have no responsibility to help the feds on civil matters. Not that the Constitution differentiates between civil and criminal when it comes to the Supremacy Clause. And the obvious but unspoken hypocrisy is that illegal immigrants, once they are arrested and put into our legal system, have crossed the line from the civil to the criminal.
In fact, approximately two-thirds of the illegals that ICE has detained are either convicted criminals. Many have been charged or have committed violent crimes, some being no-shows for their court appearance.
The record number of ICE detentions and deportations has resulted in the lowest crime stats in America in a century. That drop has occurred in NYC as well, where violent crime has dropped radically as ICE has run continued operations in the area. The explosion of crime that occurred in the early Biden years, especially around places like midtown Manhattan, where the Roosevelt Hotel was taken over and turned into a center for criminal activity for illegals, has been completely reversed.
NY has over 4,200 county, city, town and village governments, all of which want to keep crime down in their neighborhoods. Many of those governments are run by Republicans who have no interest in following Hochul and the rest of the NY Democrats who are only interested in two things, opposing anything that President Trump does, and keeping as many illegals in NY as possible until the 2030 census in the hopes of curtailing the expected population decline that could see NY lose two more congressional seats and presidential electoral votes.
This is happening just as Border Czar Tome Homan’s promise to flood NYC with ICE enforcement actions if the Dems passed their anti-ICE wish list. Reports of increased ICE activity are starting to flow in, and the pro-illegal immigrant groups are already putting out calls for citizens to engage and put their own lives on the line to interfere with ICE actions.
Groups like Hands Off NYC are already planning training sessions in the Bronx starting this weekend, no doubt with the hope of confrontations that will get similar media coverage that they got in Minnesota earlier this year.
And just yesterday a judge blocked part of the anti-ICE package that made it illegal for ICE agents to wear masks, writing that NY was violating the Supremacy Clause and, “New York cannot impose its own uniform requirements on federal agents simply because it disagrees with how the federal government is exercising its authority.”
Democrats have mistakenly acted as if they get the final say over enforcement of federal law. But the actions that are coming both from above and under these delusional elected officials will be the final word, as the millions of illegals that were allowed to flood into NY and other places during the Biden years are rounded up and sent home.
Robert Hornak is a veteran political consultant who has previously worked for the NYC office of the Republican Assembly Leader and served as Executive Director of the Queens Republican Party. He can be reached at rahornak@gmail.com and @roberthornak on X.
