A new immigration enforcement push in New York City has turned Queens into the latest battleground in the country’s escalating fight over sanctuary policies, federal authority and public safety.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began a new operation in Queens on July 27, 2026, according to reporting based on multiple ICE sources. The operation was expected to expand into Long Island and other parts of the New York metropolitan area, with agents focusing heavily on people who previously had ICE detainers lodged against them but were released from local custody.
One major detail circulating on social media, however, is wrong. The New York official at the center of the political fight is Mayor Zohran Mamdani, not “Senator Zohran Nasrallah.” Mamdani took office as New York City mayor in January 2026 and has made defending the city’s sanctuary policies a prominent part of his administration.
ICE Targets People With Unhonored Detainers
The latest operation brings a long-running dispute out of government offices and directly into New York neighborhoods.
ICE detainers are requests asking local law enforcement agencies to notify federal immigration officials before releasing certain noncitizens and, under specific circumstances, temporarily hold them so ICE can assume custody. New York City law significantly limits when the Department of Correction may comply with those requests. City rules generally require specified conditions involving a judicial warrant and serious or violent criminal convictions, although the law contains additional limited circumstances.
Federal officials argue those restrictions make immigration enforcement more dangerous and inefficient because agents who cannot take custody of a target inside a jail must search for that person later in homes, workplaces or public spaces.
White House border official Tom Homan has repeatedly made that argument, saying additional agents would be sent into New York because authorities had lost the ability to make what he considers safer arrests inside correctional facilities. Reporting on the Queens operation said agents were specifically looking for people whose previous detainers had not been honored.
The Trump administration has also used serious criminal cases to build its argument against sanctuary jurisdictions. On June 10, ICE announced arrests in the New York metropolitan area involving noncitizens convicted of crimes including murder, rape and sexual abuse of a child. Those arrests were part of separate targeted enforcement actions and should not be confused with proof that every person detained during the new Queens operation has a violent criminal conviction.
DHS has further claimed that, as of December 1, 2025, New York jurisdictions had released 6,947 people with active ICE detainers since January 20 of that year. The department said the group included people associated with homicide, assault, robbery, weapons and sex-crime cases. Those figures come from DHS and apply broadly to New York jurisdictions rather than solely to New York City.
Mamdani Is Not Backing Down
Mamdani has taken almost the opposite position.
On February 6, he signed Executive Order 13, strengthening the city’s sanctuary framework and restricting federal immigration authorities from using or accessing certain city-controlled property without legal authorization. The administration specifically identified schools, shelters, hospitals, parking lots and other city facilities among the protected locations.
That does not mean Mamdani has legally prohibited ICE from operating throughout New York City. Federal immigration agents retain federal enforcement authority. Instead, city policy limits how municipal agencies cooperate with civil immigration enforcement and restricts ICE access to nonpublic city property without a judicial warrant, subject to legal exceptions.
Mamdani has nevertheless gone considerably further rhetorically. During a June television appearance, he said “ICE should be abolished” and argued that he did not believe the agency’s approach to immigration enforcement could be reformed. He also said his administration remained proud of New York’s sanctuary policies.
His administration argues those protections encourage undocumented immigrants to report crimes, seek medical treatment, send children to school and use city services without fearing that routine contact with local government will lead directly to immigration enforcement. Executive Order 13 describes that trust as a public-safety concern in itself.
Queens Becomes the Front Line of a Bigger Fight
That leaves New York facing two competing definitions of public safety.
Federal officials argue that refusing ICE cooperation can result in people wanted for immigration enforcement being released, forcing agents to pursue them later in communities. City officials argue that broad cooperation with immigration authorities can frighten immigrant residents away from police, hospitals and other essential services.
The Queens operation demonstrates the practical consequence of that stalemate. Sanctuary policies can restrict local assistance, but they cannot erase federal immigration authority. When cooperation inside jails becomes difficult, ICE can shift enforcement onto streets and into neighborhoods.
There is another complication. Reporting about the operation warned that agents could make “collateral arrests,” meaning people encountered while officers are pursuing a specific target could also face immigration enforcement even though they were not originally being sought. That possibility is one reason immigrant advocates say neighborhood operations can affect far more people than the criminal targets emphasized in federal announcements.
The political argument, then, is larger than whether ICE can operate in Queens. It is about where immigration enforcement should happen, how much local governments should help, and what balance between enforcement and community trust actually makes a city safer.
For now, neither side appears interested in retreating. Mamdani is strengthening New York’s sanctuary protections while the federal government is demonstrating that those policies will not stop ICE from conducting its own operations.
Queens has simply become the place where that collision is now impossible to ignore.
