Mamdani’s furious response says more about the modern Democratic Party than about ICE. A foreign national overstayed a tourist visa, never received legal permission to live or work here, and still ended up inside New York City government handling public data. When immigration authorities finally detained him, the mayor treated it like a coup instead of a correction.
This is the inversion at the heart of our politics: the system bends over backward to shield those who break the law, while smearing those tasked with enforcing it. Calling immigration law an “assault on democracy” is a way of ducking accountability for years of willful neglect. The real democratic crisis isn’t ICE at a courthouse; it is political leaders who redefine “values” to mean ignoring the law until public safety, trust, and basic common sense are all put at risk.