NYC Mayor Mamdani marks Independence Day by defending illegal immigrants as ICE arrests convicted criminals
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani chose the Fourth of July to deliver an Independence Day address focused not on the nation's founding or the men and women who defend it, but on the plight of illegal immigrants facing enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The speech landed just days after the Department of Homeland Security published a detailed press release listing ICE arrests of illegal aliens convicted of child sex offenses, manslaughter, drug trafficking, and other serious crimes.
The contrast could hardly be sharper. While Mamdani described ICE agents as a menace to neighborhoods, DHS was naming the people those agents had just pulled off American streets, and the crimes that put them there.
In his address, as Breitbart reported, Mamdani cast immigration enforcement in stark terms, describing agents carrying out federal law as an occupying force:
- "We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans."
- He went further, framing resistance to ICE operations as an expression of patriotism: "We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors without asking how long they have lived here or what papers they have as ICE invades our neighborhood."
- And he characterized supporters of immigration enforcement as motivated by bigotry: "America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit. How small they are, how weak, how unoriginal."
The Mayor who hates America
DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis offered a pointed rebuttal to the kind of framing Mamdani employed. Her statement addressed the arrests directly:
"Yesterday, ICE arrested murderers, pedophiles, sexual predators, drug traffickers, and other criminal illegal aliens convicted of heinous crimes. Thanks to President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill, ICE is supercharged with 12,000 new law enforcement officers to remove the worst of the worst from American communities.
Nearly 70 percent of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S."