Mamdani’s Immigration Transition Team to Focus on Fortifying City’s Sanctuary Laws

The first meeting of the Immigration Justice Committee, one of 17 groups the mayor-elect has assembled to advise on his transition to City Hall, is expected to take place at the end of this week. It will work “to develop the best path forward for upholding and strengthening our sanctuary policies,” a spokesperson said. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announcing members of his transition team last month. (X/ZohranKMamdani) The mayor-elect s transition committee has raised about $3 million, and is getting ready to start talking policy.

About 400 experts and advocates, serving on 17 committees, are working with the Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani s transition team, and will give policy recommendations and suggest appointments for the incoming administration. After weeks of planning, the first meeting of the Immigration Justice Committee is expected to take place at the end of this week. It will be led by Grace Bonilla, CEO of the nonprofit United Way of New York City. Through the Committee on Immigrant Justice, we are engaging leaders from local and state government, nonprofits, labor, academia, business, and other sectors to develop the best path forward for upholding and strengthening our sanctuary policies, said Monica Klein, a transition team spokesperson, in a statement.

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But the Trump administration has targeted cities with sanctuary laws on the books as impediments to his immigration enforcement efforts, even suing New York City over it in July. With Donald Trump s return to the White House this year, ICE arrests of immigrants have surged in New York City and nationwide. On Monday, Mayor-elect Mamdani used his platform to provide residents with an explanation of their rights in the event of an ICE encounter. According to a New York Immigration Coalition report, the number of community arrests —in which people are apprehended in their homes, at work, or on street corners—have jumped statewide since Trump took office.

Those types of arrests are now five times more common than arrests through collaborations with local or state police, or arrests related to other task forces—tactics more commonly under the Biden administration, the report says. Advocates and City Council members in neighborhoods with high concentrations of immigrants have seen an increase in ICE activity in all the boroughs. Mamdani’s Immigration Justice transition committee is made up of 25 leaders from major immigrant advocacy groups (such as Murad Awawdeh of the New York Immigration Coalition, Natalia Aristizabal of Make the Road and Amaha Kassa of African Communities Together); large legal services providers (such as Melissa Chua of NYLAG and Rosa Cohen-Cruz of the Bronx Defenders); grassroots organizations (such as Fahd Ahmed of DRUM and Adama Bah of Afrikana); faith leaders (such as Imam Shamsi Ali of the Jamaica Muslim Center and Rabbi Rachel Timoner of Congregation Beth Elohim), as well as Bitta Mostofi, former commissioner for the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA).

A Mamdani spokesperson would not comment on who is being considered to lead MOIA under the new administration. Aristizabal, the deputy director of Make the Road NY, said she plans to push for two main priorities on behalf of the organization: city government’s compliance with sanctuary laws, and a city hotline for residents to report ICE activity.

We want to make sure that the sanctuary policies are clear for the agencies, Aristizabal said. The City’s Department of Investigations recently found that a Department of Correction investigator twice shared information—violating sanctuary laws—about two city jail detainees with U.S.

Department of Homeland Security agents. New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) created a transition memo for Mamdani, calling for the incoming mayor to ensure all agencies comply with existing rules.

The group supports passage of Intro. 214, which would allow residents to sue if local officials violate sanctuary laws by working with ICE to detain people. The second idea that Ariztizabal wants to bring to the committee s attention is the development of a hotline for New Yorkers to report ICE activities. This could be similar to the rapid response networks set up in various California counties, she said, and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights Eyes on ICE Network—a text alert system for community members about ICE sightings and activities in their area.

Once you report to the hotline, they connect to a rapid response unit that then is able to verify what s happening on the ground. And it’s a structure and resource activity for being able to track how ICE is acting in those states, Ariztizabal explained. I just feel like it s the time for New York to set that up.” The Trump administration has criticized public ICE reporting mechanisms as a threat to federal officers’ safety, and recently got tech giant Apple to remove apps that crowdsource such information.

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