White House: Due to NYC Mayor-elect Mamdani’s video calling for resistance, the warns of a “1,000 pc rise” in assaults on ICE officers
White House: A recent video by Indian American New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani urging immigrants to “stand up to ICE” was harshly condemned by the White House, which warned that such messages are fueling an increase in harassment and violence against federal immigration authorities.
The Trump administration is “definitely concerned about the rise in violence and attacks and physical threats” against agents, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who described the escalation as frightening. “Violent attacks on them and their families have increased by more than a thousand percent,” she said.
Leavitt said that ICE agents are only “enforcing our nation’s immigration laws” and that they “have been doxed, they’ve been harassed, many of them have been physically assaulted and attacked.”
The administration “condemns that wholeheartedly” and would continue its goal “in every state… to remove illegal aliens and public safety threats from American communities,” she said in response to a question about whether New York’s statement may encourage citizens to oppose enforcement operations.
As President Trump used record-low encounter numbers to label the present border situation the “most secure” in US history, the press secretary made these comments. “For the seventh consecutive month, US Border Patrol released zero illegal aliens into the United States,” said Leavitt.
“We’ve seen less apprehensions overall in ten months under President Trump than we saw in one month under Joe Biden,” she said, drawing a comparison with the previous administration.
The administration’s rhetoric, which mostly emphasizes enforcement and deterrent, has struck a chord in certain regions of the nation but heightened tensions in large cities like New York, where thousands of immigrants from India live and work.
Leavitt said that Trump had won “the single greatest and fastest national security victory in modern American history” and restored “sovereignty” at the border. Continued reductions in illegal crossings are “remarkable results,” she added.
One of the most divisive topics in American politics for a long time has been immigration enforcement. Court decisions often influence the extent of government engagement, and successive administrations have had difficulty striking a balance between security imperatives and humanitarian concerns.