BREAKING: Tom Homan Warns Massive ICE Surge Is Coming To…

White House border czar Tom Homan delivered a blunt message to New York City this week: a major surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents is on the way, and the administration does not intend to be talked out of it.

“It’s coming,” Homan told the hosts of “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Sunday. He confirmed that ICE is already active in the five boroughs and across the state, but said the current footprint is about to grow substantially.

Homan has been careful not to disclose operational details. He said the administration will not tip its hand to what he described as “well-funded groups” that he believes are organizing to interfere with federal enforcement actions. That reluctance to share specifics has been a consistent theme in his public comments over the past several weeks.

The warning comes directly on the heels of comments from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who used a New York Times interview to declare his pride in the city’s sanctuary status and to make clear that City Hall has no intention of assisting federal immigration authorities.

Mamdani told the Times that the city is “unwilling” to participate in civil immigration enforcement carried out by a federal government he accused of wanting to deport people for offenses the city “will never even know” about.

Homan was not shy about firing back. He argued that Mamdani is free to hold whatever position he likes, but that the mayor’s stance will not stop ICE from doing its job inside city limits. The border czar has repeatedly framed sanctuary policies as a direct threat to public safety, arguing that they allow criminal illegal aliens to be released back onto the street rather than turned over to federal custody.

The roots of this latest showdown go back to legislation signed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul that restricts cooperation between state and local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. Homan has said publicly that he personally warned Hochul against signing the measure and that the promised surge is in direct response to her decision to move forward anyway.

The legislation effectively ended the state’s 287(g) agreements with ICE, arrangements that allowed local and state law enforcement officers to be delegated limited immigration enforcement authority under federal oversight. Those agreements had been used to identify and process removable individuals who were already sitting in local jails on unrelated charges.

With the agreements terminated, Homan argues that ICE loses an efficient tool for taking custody of criminal aliens before they are released back into communities.

“You can expect more ICE agents to go to New York because Gov. Hochul signed legislation that ended our agreements,” Homan told reporters outside the White House. “We’re going to surge resources in New York. We have to.”

Hochul has pushed back hard on the framing. She has argued that the surge threat contradicts earlier assurances from the administration that it would not flood jurisdictions that had not requested federal help. She has also said her state’s law enforcement will continue to cooperate on criminal matters, while declining to become an arm of civil immigration enforcement.

“In New York, our local police need to be focused on local crimes and not filling up our jails with people who ICE has taken off our streets, out of our schools, out of our pizzerias, out of our homes, and I’m not going to be part of that,” Hochul told reporters.

She characterized her approach as “common sense,” insisting that state resources should not be diverted toward civil immigration matters.

Homan has offered one significant assurance amid the tough talk. He has stated explicitly that the New York operation will not resemble the controversial ICE surge that took place in Minneapolis earlier this year, an operation that drew intense national scrutiny after two American citizens were killed during the crackdown.

“You will not see a Minnesota,” Homan said, distancing the coming New York operation from that earlier episode even as he promises it will be the largest deployment the city has seen.

The scale of the promised operation has been described by Homan in striking terms. “You are going to see more ICE agents than you have ever seen in New York City,” he said during an appearance on Fox News. “And it’s coming. I just reviewed an operational plan. I’m not going to tell you exactly when it’s going to happen, but it’s coming.”

The timing adds another layer of complexity. New York City has been bracing for an influx of visitors tied to major sporting events, including the NBA Finals and the World Cup, both of which have brought large crowds and international attention to the city in recent weeks. Any large-scale ICE operation during this period would unfold under an unusually bright spotlight.

Mamdani, for his part, has vowed resistance. He has publicly pledged that the city will “fight any of these threats tooth and nail,” positioning himself as a direct counterweight to the administration’s immigration enforcement priorities.

The mayor has leaned into his sanctuary city credentials since taking office, treating the posture as a defining feature of his administration.

Homan has repeatedly cited arrest numbers to bolster his argument that sanctuary policies endanger the public. He contends that thousands of criminal aliens have already been taken into custody nationwide as part of the administration’s broader enforcement push and that jurisdictions like New York that limit cooperation with ICE are making it harder to remove people who have already been convicted of crimes.

The dispute has also drawn in other political figures. Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat who has occasionally broken from his party on immigration enforcement questions, warned that Mamdani risks provoking a “constitutional crisis” by suggesting the city might defy federal court rulings tied to immigration enforcement. That warning underscores that unease with Mamdani’s posture is not confined strictly to Republicans.

Senate Republicans, meanwhile, have rallied around a Department of Homeland Security proposal aimed squarely at sanctuary jurisdictions.

The proposal reflects a broader GOP argument that cities and states that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities should face financial or political consequences. Advocates of the approach argue that sanctuary policies amount to jurisdictions picking and choosing which federal laws they will enforce, undermining the rule of law.

Homan has also referenced a recent controversy involving a Memphis pizzeria in his public remarks, using it as an example of the kind of workplace and business settings where ICE has carried out enforcement actions. He has argued that critics who focus on the optics of such operations are ignoring the underlying point: that the individuals targeted are, in the administration’s telling, criminal aliens who should not have been in a position to be arrested in the first place.

For now, the exact timing and scope of the New York surge remain unknown to the public. Homan has made clear that keeping the operational details under wraps is intentional, a decision he frames as necessary to prevent organized interference.

What is clear is that the standoff between the Trump administration and New York’s state and city leadership over immigration enforcement has escalated into one of the most closely watched confrontations of Trump’s second term, with both sides digging in and neither showing signs of backing down.