Let's just say New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is already acting as if he's got the chair and the office.
While the young man's election in spite of his well-known aversion to law enforcement has turned out to be an effective recruiting tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the city area...
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is using Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s victory to recruit police officers to leave the New York Police Department.
On Friday, ICE posted a recruitment message to social media calling on police officers to “Defend the Homeland” and “work for a President and a Secretary who support and defend law enforcement—not defund or demonize it.”
ICE’s message references Mamdani’s history of police criticism, including his past support for defunding the NYPD. In June 2020, Mamdani posted on X: “We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD.”
...his choices to fill advisory posts as his city team comes together have only served to reinforce the impression that he is swerving to the hard left of positions he averred during the campaign.
For example, his choice of 'criminal justice advisor' to help shape the city's crime and policing policy is for sure a criminal expert, emphasis on both words. Only the man's expertise is lived, not book-learning at City College.
🚨 NEW YORK, MEET YOUR NEW “CRIMINAL JUSTICE” ADVISER 🚨
— Jews Fight Back 🇺🇸🇮🇱 (@JewsFightBack) December 8, 2025
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani just appointed a convicted armed robber to help shape NYC’s crime and policing policy.
Meet Mysonne Linen.
Served 7 years for armed robberies of NYC taxi drivers.
Beat one victim with a bottle.… pic.twitter.com/bg2NLHRMjS
...Beat one victim with a bottle.
Held another at gunpoint.
Stole cash and jewelry.
He was offered a one year plea deal.
He rejected it.
A jury convicted him anyway.
Got seven years instead.
The victims identified him in court. He still denies everything.
Zero remorse. Zero accountability.
And now? He’s advising on criminal justice reform.
Linen is also a vocal admirer of Louis Farrakhan, writing:
“The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has inspired and motivated me!! His unapologetic Leadership is what is needed in this Time.”
Insane.
New York City is being handed over to radicals, extremists, and outright terrorists.
Watch this space.
This is going to get even uglier.
This fellow isn't an outlier - he's the vanguard. A young man in the video below is urging college students and rising seniors in high school to keep 'social work in mind as a career path,' because 'as we work to defund the police,' guess who is going to be taking the coppers' spots in a knife fight? Those same fresh-faced recent graduates of Commie U, naturally.
And he is only the first voice in this montage of the Zohran's Community Safety Team's Greatest Hits.
THE POLICE OFFICER IS THE NATURAL ENEMY OF THE WORKING CLASS
Zohran Mamdani’s “Community Safety” team is full of activists who call cops “violence workers,” want prisons “obsolete,” and vow to shrink the NYPD.
— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) December 8, 2025
New Yorkers are test subjects in what may become the largest anti-policing experiment in the world.
My latest for @CityJournal pic.twitter.com/p5Z6L1veia
The mayor-elect has been making the rounds, assuring everyone that the crazy crap they voted for is what they're going to get in spades.
NYC mayor-elect Mamdani in less than 60 seconds:
— Daniel Turner (@DanielTurnerPTF) December 5, 2025
Says he opposes "any new fossil fuel construction."
Then says he is "focused on the affordability crisis"
So… he’s committed to making energy more expensive to fight the affordability crisis? Got it. pic.twitter.com/tOHUIwKtKj
And then some. A young Hamas supporter was the mayor-elect's first political endorsement. Aber Kawas is running for Assembly District 34.
Everyone knows the Big Apple is a living, breathing, teeming hive of millions of moving parts, and events weren't going to wait for the photogenic Zohran to raise his hand officially before giving him a chance to opine, and so they didn't.
ICE certainly wasn't going to sit back and wait for events to shake out - they have work to do. They've been working in Chinatown since the end of November, and some of the confrontations have gotten heated - especially since residents and activists have taken to blocking ICE vehicles in parking garages.
Woman records as she reports ICE being in Chinatown NYC earlier today. pic.twitter.com/xEo3mqDB8w
— ICE of TikTok (@ICEofTikTok) December 2, 2025
Demonstrations have broken out to disrupt convoys, and the NYPD was called in to move them out.
This feeds right into immigration activists and Mamdani's narrative - the police are there to brutalize residents at the behest of the federal government.
It didn't take the TikTok media-savvy mayor-elect long to pump out an answer, and it is slickly done, I have to admit.
There is nothing in this professionally produced, carefully couched language, 'know your rights' video that can be used against Mamdani in a 'resistance' charge.
WE CAN ALL STAND UP TO ICE
The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, said it's okay by her.
Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday she had “no problem” with Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s instructional video on how illegal migrants in New York City can “stand up” to federal immigration authorities.
“Everybody in this state should know their rights for themselves, their families, or for their neighbors, and their fellow worshippers in places of worship,” Hochul told reporters at an unrelated event.
“So no, everybody should know these rights, because they’re being trampled on right now,” she said.
“I have no problem with the mayor-elect using this platform to let people know the rights they have in this great country."
I think Kristi Noem is off-base here in her interview after the Mamdani video broke, telling Hannity that it might well be a constitutional violation. That sort of reaction doesn't help the situation, when it's quite apparent, however maddening the Mamdani spot is, it's clearly written precisely to be a legal public service announcement, however much of a stick-in-the-eye it is to enforcement efforts.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem calls out NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, warning that his advice on evading law enforcement could violate the Constitution amid soaring attacks on ICE agents:
— Sean Hannity 🇺🇸 (@seanhannity) December 9, 2025
"The mayor, if he were mayor, could be violating the Constitution by giving advice on how to… pic.twitter.com/ne6R1kC0WC
..."The mayor, if he were mayor, could be violating the Constitution by giving advice on how to evade law enforcement and how to get away with breaking the law. It's really unbelievable in this country what we are seeing. Those ICE agents you were referencing — the violent attacks that have increased 1,200%, death threats against them are at 8,000%."
Noem would have been far better off had she affirmed the legality of the ICE enforcement actions. She should emphasize that her law officers follow those very rules the mayor outlines every time. That it's only when they're interfered with by activists or the subject attempts to fight or flees - precisely as the mayor warns against - that the situations spin out of control. That's never what her officers intend at all, but is often what's forced on them. It puts everyone's life in danger.
That's what she should hammer, over and over again.
Also, in the instructions, Mamdani ignores the fact that ICE can most assuredly stop you without a judicial warrant in public, nor are they allowed to show a warrant to anyone not named in the warrant.
...ICE does not need judicial warrants to make arrests. Like all other law enforcement officers, ICE officers and agents can initiate consensual encounters and speak with people, briefly detain aliens when they have reasonable suspicion that the aliens are illegally present in the United States, and arrest people they believe are illegal aliens. ICE officers and agents can also detain and search people crossing the border.
All aliens who violate U.S. immigration law are subject to arrest and detention, regardless of their criminal histories. Those with final orders of removal are removed from the United States.
I am positive that the fact that those two pertinent regulations aren't clarified in Mamdani's 'Know Your Rights' video is a purposeful omission of malicious intent.
The video implies that every encounter requires a warrant and that every action can be questioned, which simply isn't true. People listening to the mayor-elect here aren't going to parse whether ICE is at someone's door or on a street in Chinatown. They're going to erupt, period, even worse now, thinking they are justified - they heard the mayor say ICE needs warrants and has to answer questions.
And ICE, CBP, and DHS officers will pay the price because the mayor-elect made sure everyone heard the part he wanted them to hear, not the rest of what ICE is legally allowed to do.
Take the righteousness of the actions back from Mamdani now. ICE is enforcing immigration law, as the laws are written and have been through the court system repeatedly - and won - to do so.
Situations spool out of control when the subjects fight, flee, or those who would interfere become physical.
What I also see in this video is a very dangerous individual with a team who knows how to use media so effectively that it is going to be imperative that someone of equal talent keep pace with them, or even beat them to the messaging punch.
Members of Mamdani's team are already under investigation for this very ICE evasion thing.
New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s (D.) transition team includes a man whose organization is under congressional investigation for allegedly teaching illegal aliens how to evade ICE officers, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
Mamdani named Wayne Ho, who has served as president and CEO of the Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) nonprofit since 2017, to his Committee on Social Services last month. The House Committee on Homeland Security opened an investigation into CPC in April based on a video showing a member of CPC’s leadership "explaining strategies for avoiding and potentially impeding immigration officials during a seminar in New York," according to a letter from then-committee chairman and former congressman Mark Green (R., Tenn.).
Green wrote that the committee was "deeply concerned that CPC and other NGOs that receive taxpayer dollars may be advising or training illegal aliens on strategies to avoid cooperation with immigration officials." Though Green no longer leads the committee, a staff member confirmed to the Free Beacon that the investigation is ongoing.
Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R., N.Y.), who has served as chairman since July, told the Free Beacon in a statement that he and the rest of the Committee on Homeland Security plan to hold those who work to impede ICE’s mission accountable.
This is the opening salvo, and there's no gainsaying that it wasn't a whale of a shot across the bow. I mean, the quiet reasonableness completely blows, say, Brandon Johnson's, Pritzker's, or Karen Bass's bloviating, nonsensical sputterings out the door.
And don't think for two seconds that this isn't going to become the playbook.
Give the mob just enough legal information to empower them and move them in the wrong direction.
It doesn't take much for it all to go to hell in a handbasket.
The Zohran knows that.
He's counting on enabling it while making sure he's covered with plausible deniability.
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