New York City lawmakers are staring in disbelief as leading mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani pledges to boost taxpayer funding for deportation defense by over $100 million dollars.
Mamdani, a New York State Assembly member and self-described democratic socialist, has put forward a plan to turbocharge public spending on deportation defense for illegal migrants, pledging to more than triple the Big Apple’s current spending if elected to the mayor’s office. He’s touting the audacious proposal as local officials repeatedly warn that the city is walking a fiscal tightrope.
“This is what we would get from a Mayor Mamdani: ripping millions in hard-earned taxpayer dollars away from legal citizens and handing it over to people who broke the law to be in our country,” NYC Council Member Inna Vernikov said to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“It’s impossible to fathom why anyone would vote to put Mamdani in Gracie Mansion when he so obviously has disdain for American citizens,” Vernikov added.
The Big Apple shelled out $17,350,000 in fiscal year 2022, $16,600,000 in fiscal year 2023, and another $16,600,000 in fiscal year 2024 on the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP), which specializes in providing representation for foreign nationals who’ve been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to city budget data. These millions of dollars were spent while New Yorkers were hit incredibly hard by the Biden era border crisis, a situation so severe that city leaders were forced to enact budget cuts for other services used by residents.
NYC’s 2026 budget, passed in June, allocates $54.5 million in taxpayer funding for foreign nationals fighting deportation orders, an amount outgoing Mayor Eric Adams said is more than what any other city spends. However, Mamdani believes current funding isn’t nearly enough.
“A cornerstone of our campaign is to increase funding for those very legal defense services by more than $100 million so that we can ensure we’re taking every step we can to keep New Yorkers safe, to keep New Yorkers together, and to show the world that they are welcome in this city,” the far-left candidate said during an appearance on MSNBC earlier in September.
Funding for deportation defense would skyrocket to $165 million under a Mamdani administration, according to his campaign website.
The Democratic socialist lawmaker wants to increase funding of the NYIFUP from $16 million to $30 million while ratcheting up spending on other immigration legal services by millions of dollars. The funding increases are part of Mamdani’s plans for “Trump-proofing” NYC.
It’s not immediately clear where the funding boost for deportation defense would come from. A spokesperson for Mamdani’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
In August, the New York State comptroller warned that, while NYC’s 2026 budget is currently balanced, there are “significant concerns” that slowing economic growth and other funding could jeopardize the city’s financial standing. The comptroller’s report encouraged city officials to make preparations in order prevent risks to discretionary programs.
“Not one penny of taxpayer funds should be supporting illegal immigration here in NYC at all,” GOP Council Member Vickie Paladino said in a statement to the DCNF.
“The taxpayers have had enough of this nonsense and Zohran Mamdani’s recent pledge of $100 million in additional funding for undocumented migrants to fight deportation orders in immigration court — if elected mayor — is simply beyond belief,” Paladino continued. “Mamdani’s proposal demonstrates a striking disconnect from the realities New Yorkers are facing and from how residents want their tax dollars to be spent.”
City Council opposition to Mamdani’s proposal extends beyond the political aisle, with one Democrat vowing to fight “with everything I’ve got” against it.
“New York is in a fiscal crisis, and Mamdani wants to rip another $100 million from taxpayers to bankroll deportation defense, rewarding lawbreaking while seniors, classrooms, sanitation, and public safety go without,” Council Member Robert Holden, a Democrat, said on social media. “It spits in the face of every immigrant who played by the rules, and I will fight this giveaway with everything I’ve got.”
A spokesperson for Holden’s office reiterated these statements when reached by the DCNF.
The immigration crisis turned NYC voters — an incredibly liberal constituency — sour on sanctuary policies. A February survey by the Manhattan Institute found 54% of voters believing the city’s immigration policies were “too soft” and 72% in support of local cooperation with ICE to deport illegal migrants who’ve committed crimes.
Under U.S. law, immigration violations are civil offenses, not criminal, meaning defendants have no 6th Amendment right to an attorney even if they are too destitute to afford one. For this reason, pro-immigration groups have pushed major cities to fund their own deportation defense initiatives to give illegal migrants representation in immigration court.
NYC is where the push for universal immigration representation largely began. The Big Apple allocated half a million dollars in its 2014 fiscal year budget for a pilot program providing representation in immigration proceedings, and the following year the city council ballooned this funding to nearly $5 million, cementing the establishment of NYIFUP.
The entire state of New York has around 670,000 illegal migrants, with a vast number of them processed through NYC, according to a study by the Fiscal Policy Institute. There are more than 58,000 illegal migrants with convictions or pending criminal charges roaming around the Big Apple, per ICE data obtained by the New York Post.
Law firms that provide deportation defense services to foreign nationals in NYC do not restrict eligibility based on criminal history, meaning illegal migrants charged or convicted of serious crimes are capable of securing representation in immigration court on the taxpayers’ dime.
Once considered an unlikely contender for the mayor’s office, Mamdani has since established himself as the clear front-runner after winning the Democratic Party nomination over the summer. The far-left candidate leads former New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who’s been polling in second place and running as an independent, by double digits, according to the latest surveys.
Current NYC Mayor Eric Adams, who was also running as an independent, dropped out of the race on Saturday. The outgoing mayor had been polling relatively closely to Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee in the race.
“Everyone deserves due process, but New Yorkers should not be forced to bankroll another $100 million for deportation defense when our city struggles to fund basic services and veteran services is severely lacking,” Sliwa said Monday to the DCNF. “It is unfair to taxpayers and to those who played by the rules to come here legally, and enough is enough.”
In addition to boosting funding for deportation defense by leaps and bounds, Mamdani also supports banning federal immigration authorities from “all City facilities” and vows to “immediately” end any cooperation with ICE, according to his campaign website. The mayoral candidate also claims that sanctuary laws “make us safer.”
(Featured Image Media Credit: Bingjiefu He / Wikimedia Commons)
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