A federal judge ordered Mayor Zohran Mamdani to comply with a subpoena seeking information about migrants with criminal records at a city shelter. Last week, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled that the mayor must help ICE identify these individuals. This decision puts Mamdani in a difficult legal and political bind.
A federal judge ordered Mayor Zohran Mamdani to comply with a federal subpoena that seeks information about migrants with serious criminal records at a city shelter.
Over the past year, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has fiercely resisted entreaties from the Trump administration to help with its immigration crackdown in New York, even calling for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to be abolished.
But last week, a federal judged handed New York City leaders a setback.
A ruling by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, of Manhattan federal court, would force Mr. Mamdani to comply with a year-old subpoena and help ICE identify immigrants in the city's last migrant shelter who have serious criminal histories and are in the United States illegally.
The ruling, though narrowly focused on migrants in one shelter, has placed Mr. Mamdani in a legal and political bind.
If he complies, he would be aiding an agency he has rebuked and threatened to sue. If he fights, he would be hailed by his left-wing base but is likely to open himself to further attacks from Republicans for protecting migrants with criminal records who are staying in a taxpayer-funded shelter.
Though Mr. Mamdani has nurtured a surprisingly amicable relationship with President Trump, the mayor's repudiation of ICE had grown more forceful after a federal immigration officer shot and injured a Dominican migrant in New York last month.