Homan has approved a plan to surge ICE into NYC: Here’s what we know
Ahead of President Donald Trump’s planned NBA Finals trip to New York City, White House immigration official Tom Homan warned that the administration will expand immigration enforcement in the city’s five boroughs, not upstate or Long Island. He said an ICE surge is coming, promising more agents than New Yorkers have previously seen, and attributed the crackdown partly to New York officials reducing the ability for “safe arrests” via county jails.
The article says the administration is keeping operational details limited, with reporting suggesting Customs and Border Protection may not participate as it has in prior federal operations.it also contrasts the scale of previous ICE/CВP deployments in other states-dispatching thousands of agents-with expectations of less public backlash if CBP is excluded.
homan previously indicated the increase would follow pushback from Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, both of whom oppose ICE taking custody of detained people after local arrests. The piece notes large numbers of undocumented immigrants living in NYC and relatively modest arrest totals nationally under the Trump administration, arguing that sanctuary policies limit ICE’s ability to act.
Mamdani rejects ICE engagement, calling raids cruel and opposing targeted enforcement in communities, and has said he believes ICE should be abolished. The article adds that Hochul and Homan discussed cooperation in March, and that Homan blamed legislation reducing local cooperation-claiming Hochul still signed it-while stating it would lead to sending larger enforcement teams into neighborhoods to locate individuals ICE wants to arrest.
Just hours before President Donald Trump was set to arrive in his hometown of New York City for the National Basketball Association finals, White House border czar Tom Homan issued a pointed warning aimed at illegal immigrants across the five boroughs: immigration enforcement is coming.
The administration’s chief immigration official stated on Monday that the forthcoming Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge will focus on the city’s five boroughs: the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island — as opposed to upstate New York or Long Island’s Nassau or Suffolk counties.
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“I made [Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY)] 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 on Fox News’ Fox and Friends Monday morning. “I’m keeping my promise. We’re going to send more ICE agents to New York because you took away the efficiencies of safe arrests in county jails.”
The plans are being kept close to the chest, according to four current and former senior administration officials who spoke with the Washington Examiner on Monday.
One change may be the exclusion of the Department of Homeland Security’s agency, Customs and Border Protection, from the NYC operation. Two officials said CBP had no plans to deploy Border Patrol, Air and Marine Operations, or Office of Field Operations personnel to assist ICE, which would be a break from how both agencies worked side by side during the bicoastal crusade the DHS waged under former Secretary Kristi Noem.
For example, during the Minnesota deployment of ICE and CBP, approximately 3,000 federal law enforcement agents and officers were dispatched across the state through December 2025 and January 2026. Not including CBP personnel, and notably without assistance from former Border Patrol regional chief Gregory Bovino, the operation is likely to draw less public blowback.
Homan first disclosed five weeks ago that ICE would surge law enforcement to New York in the near future in response to Gov. Kathy Hochul and the city’s Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s refusal to let ICE take custody of illegal immigrants in county jails.
Homan said he “just reviewed an operational plan” to send in more ICE personnel, an indication that the plan was not just in theory but close to being put into action. When Homan sat down with the Washington Examiner in late May, he said he was still “working on a plan.”
More than 450,000 illegal immigrants were believed to reside in the city as of 2023, according to an analysis of census data by the Center for Migration Studies of New York.
ICE arrests nationwide sat at just over 450,000 as of April. The state has had the fourth-most arrests of illegal immigrants since Trump took office in January 2025 through early March. However, arrests barely topped 10,000 — a drop in the bucket of the illegal immigrant population in New York, much less New York City.
Sanctuary jurisdictions such as New York will not allow local or state police to work with ICE by turning over illegal immigrants encountered in traffic stops or arrested on criminal charges. They also generally will not hold detainees after they post bail or bond so ICE can come to the jail and take custody of them.
Under former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former New York Police Department official, the city had agreed to let ICE access illegal immigrants detained at the city jail, known as Rikers Island.
Mamdani has shown no willingness to reach an agreement with Homan or the White House. The Uganda-born first-term mayor said on Monday that he opposed ICE’s enforcement of federal immigration laws by going into communities to arrest specific individuals.
“We’ve heard time and again threats in immigration enforcement across our city,” Mamdani said at a World Cup preview event. “I want to be very clear about the fact that I believe that ICE raids are cruel, they are inhumane, they do nothing to serve in the interest of public safety. I’ve shared that directly with the president, I’ve shared that in public. It is a feeling that many New Yorkers share.”
Over the weekend, Mamdani went further and said “ICE should be abolished” because “there is no way to reform this kind of cruelty that we’re seeing.”
Hochul and Homan met in March to discuss federal and state cooperation on immigration enforcement in the aftermath of the Minnesota operation and as New York looked at passing a state budget and legislative bill that would further chill police cooperation with ICE.
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“I said, ‘But if you sign the legislation that I think you’re getting about ready to sign, that means I’m going to send more agents to New York because now rather than one guy, arresting one bad guy in the jail, now we got [sic] to send a whole team into a neighborhood to find this person that don’t want to be found,’” Homan said on Monday.
“I told her it’s safer for the community, it’s safer for the officers, it’s safer for the aliens to have this cooperation with the jails,” he said. “She signed the legislation anyways.”
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