White House border czar Tom Homan says a major ICE enforcement surge is coming to New York City, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani's sanctuary city boasts will not slow it down.
Homan appeared on "Fox & Friends Weekend" on Sunday and delivered a blunt message aimed at the city's democratic socialist mayor, who had spent the previous day telling The New York Times that New York would refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Homan did not hold back about the federal government's intentions.
"ICE is operating in New York City today. We're operating across the state today, but there's going to be a surge, and there needs to be a surge," Homan told the Fox News hosts. He added two words that left little room for interpretation: "It's coming."
The exchange marks the latest and sharpest escalation in a months-long standoff between the Trump administration and New York's political leadership over immigration enforcement, a standoff that has only intensified since Governor Kathy Hochul signed sweeping sanctuary state legislation in late May 2026. That law blocks local police from partnering with ICE and bars federal agents from entering schools or hospitals without a judicial warrant, according to Just The News.
In his Saturday interview with The New York Times, Mamdani laid out a position that amounts to open defiance of federal law. He framed the city's refusal to assist immigration authorities as a matter of principle.
"What we are unwilling to do is to participate in [civil immigration enforcement] with a federal government that has said openly it wants to deport a vast majority of people for crimes that we will never even know."
That quote, with its suggestion that deportation targets are guilty of nothing meaningful, drew a sharp response from Homan. He pointed out that crossing the border illegally is itself a federal crime, and that the administration's enforcement posture rests on existing law, not executive invention.
"He's d*** right. Every illegal alien in this nation that's here illegally, [and] crossed the border illegally, which is a crime, [needs to be deported]. That's called the rule of law. If he doesn't like it, call your members of Congress, tell them to change the law."
Mamdani has gone further than merely refusing to cooperate. In earlier public statements, he called ICE raids "cruel" and "inhumane" and declared flatly that "ICE should be abolished," as the Washington Examiner reported. That language places him well outside even the mainstream Democratic position on immigration enforcement and squarely in the abolitionist wing of his party.
When The New York Times asked Mamdani whether he had ever visited the U.S.-Mexico border, his answer was a single word: "No." For a mayor positioning himself as the face of resistance to border enforcement, the admission is notable. He is staking out one of the most aggressive sanctuary postures in the country while declining to see the conditions that drive federal enforcement policy.
Mamdani's pattern of confrontation with federal authority extends well beyond immigration. He has pledged to defy a Supreme Court ruling ending deportation protections for Haitians and Syrians, a stance that drew a warning from Senator John Fetterman about triggering a constitutional crisis.
Sunday's warning was not the first time Homan telegraphed the surge. Back in early June, he confirmed on Fox News that he had already reviewed an operational plan to flood New York City with ICE agents. His language then was nearly identical to Sunday's message.
"I made her a promise, you're going to see more ICE agents than you've ever seen in New York City, and it's coming," Homan said at the time, referring to Governor Hochul, according to the New York Post. He also revealed that he had privately warned Hochul before she signed the sanctuary legislation that blocking ICE from taking custody of detainees in county jails would trigger a significant federal response.
Hochul signed the bills anyway.
The result, as Homan explained, is that ICE now has to make arrests on the street instead of in the controlled setting of a jail, a change that he says is less safe for agents and communities alike. "We are going to send more ICE agents to New York because you took away the efficiencies of safe arrests in county jails," he said, as Newsmax reported.
The surge is set to target all five New York City boroughs. Over 450,000 illegal immigrants were estimated to reside in the city as of 2023, yet ICE arrests across the entire state of New York barely topped 10,000 since President Trump took office, according to the Washington Examiner. That gap between the estimated illegal immigrant population and actual enforcement activity helps explain why the administration views a surge as overdue.
On Sunday, Homan was careful not to lay out specifics about the timing, scale, or methods of the planned surge. He cited a practical concern: organized opposition.
"But I am not going to show our hand because there are... well-funded groups who will try to impede, interfere. We're not going to give them any upside on this."
He did not name those groups, but the concern is not abstract. Sanctuary jurisdictions across the country have seen organized "know your rights" campaigns, rapid-response legal networks, and activist groups that track ICE movements in real time and alert communities. In a city whose mayor has publicly called for abolishing the agency, the operational environment for federal agents is as hostile as anywhere in the country.
Mamdani's broader political profile adds context to the standoff. The mayor has not limited his provocations to immigration. He weighed arresting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu during a planned New York visit, and his administration drew federal pushback when the State Department blocked one of his officials from a planned meeting with Iran's UN ambassador.
His July Fourth speech, delivered from George Washington's desk, denounced both capitalism and law enforcement on the nation's 250th birthday. The pattern is consistent: Mamdani governs as an ideological provocateur who treats federal authority as an adversary rather than a partner.
And his rising national profile has attracted attention from national Democrats. Kamala Harris has courted Mamdani and pro-Palestinian activists as she positions for a possible 2028 presidential bid, a sign that the party's progressive wing sees his brand of defiance as a political asset, not a liability.
The core dynamic is straightforward. Federal law requires the removal of people who entered the country illegally. New York City's mayor has declared he will not lift a finger to help. The governor signed legislation designed to make enforcement harder. And the White House border czar says the federal government will respond by sending more agents than the city has ever seen.
Mamdani frames this as compassion. Homan frames it as lawlessness. But the practical consequence is measurable: when local jails refuse to hold detainees for ICE pickup, agents have to find those same people on the street, in a city of eight million, across five boroughs, with an activist infrastructure designed to help people evade them.
That means more agents, more resources, more street-level operations, and more friction between federal officers and the communities they operate in. Every one of those costs, financial, operational, and human, flows directly from the decision by New York's leaders to obstruct enforcement rather than cooperate with it.
Homan's message on Sunday was not a threat. It was a promise repeated. The surge is coming because New York's leaders made it necessary, and because the law does not require a mayor's permission to be enforced.
