Zohran Mamdani keeps picking fights with the federal agents removing illegal aliens from New York.
Republicans say the socialist mayor keeps testing how far he can push Washington.
And Mamdani just put out one message that shows exactly who he thinks he works for.
Zohran Mamdani Ditched English to Coach Illegal Aliens on ICE
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently released a video walking viewers through what to do when ICE agents come knocking. He recorded the whole thing in Spanish.
The mayor told viewers that agents can’t enter private spaces without a judicial warrant, then coached them on checking the paperwork. “In a document, look for the words ‘United States District Court’ and a judge’s signature,” Mamdani said, according to Mediaite’s translation. “You can ask the officers to pass the order under the door.”
Then he handed over a script for the doorway. “If they do not have a judicial warrant, you can leave the door closed and say, ‘I do not consent to your entry.’”
He had sidewalk advice too. “If ICE stops you on the street, ask, ‘Am I free to go?’ If the agent says yes, walk away calmly,” the mayor said, before urging viewers to “Speak with a lawyer before signing any documents or making any decisions about your immigration status or case.”
Nobody needs a law degree to figure out who that last line was for.
Republicans Lit Up the Mayor in Plain English
The backlash came fast. US Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) shared the clip and wrote, “The Mayor of New York is openly helping illegal aliens evade @ICEgov and undermine the law.”
US Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) zeroed in on what the video left out. “At no point in this video is anyone urged to abide by the laws of the United States,” Lee posted.
Congressman Nick LaLota (R-NY) went after the money and the language at the same time, accusing “the socialist mayor” of “using taxpayer resources to instruct illegals, in Spanish, how to evade accountability.”
Online commentators turned the heat up further. The account DC_Draino declared, “This is not free speech. This is sedition.” Commentator Derek Hunter wrote that Mamdani “should be charged as an accessory to any crime an illegal alien commits in NYC.”
No prosecutor has filed anything like that, and neither man pointed to a specific statute. But the fury tells you how far the mayor has drifted from the taxpayers who sign his paycheck.
And the clip landed in a city already on edge. ICE agents shot an illegal alien with his son in the car during an operation in October 2026, and protests spread across New York afterward, according to Mediaite.
Mamdani Quietly Dropped One Warning From His First Video
This isn’t the mayor’s first rodeo. As mayor-elect, before he took office in January 2026, Mamdani posted a know-your-rights video covering the same warrant rules. That one ran in English with Spanish subtitles.
It also carried a warning. “It is important to remain calm during any interaction with ICE or law enforcement,” Mamdani said back then. “Do not impede their investigation, resist arrest or run.”
The portions of the new Spanish video that Mediaite translated contain no version of that line.
Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) blasted the first video at the time, accusing him of showing New Yorkers how “to evade federal law enforcement.” Mamdani shrugged it off.
So in less than a year, the mayor went from English with subtitles to Spanish with no English at all. That’s a direction, and it isn’t toward the rest of the country.
City Hall Picked a Language and Left Americans Out of It
Here’s the part most of the outrage skipped. Mamdani didn’t invent the warrant rules in that video, and civil liberties pamphlets have printed the same talking points for years.
What matters is the audience he chose, and the language he chose to reach it.
A mayor speaks for an entire city. When he records official guidance in a foreign tongue and aims it at people trying to slip past federal immigration agents, he tells the cab driver in Queens and the retired cop on Staten Island exactly where they rank.
President Trump saw this problem coming. On March 1, 2025, he signed Executive Order 14224, making English the official language of the United States for the first time in the country’s history. “A nationally designated language is at the core of a unified and cohesive society, and the United States is strengthened by a citizenry that can freely exchange ideas in one shared language,” the order reads.
Trump’s order also tossed out a Bill Clinton directive from 2000 that pushed federal agencies to provide language help to non-English speakers. And it laid out the goal plainly: “a policy of encouraging the learning and adoption of our national language will make the United States a shared home and empower new citizens to achieve the American dream.”
Mamdani understands the value of English better than most. He became a naturalized citizen in 2018, and the naturalization test requires applicants to read, write, and speak basic English.
But the mayor apparently doesn’t think the newest arrivals should have to bother.
Plenty of readers had grandparents who learned English at the kitchen table with a dictionary, a radio, and a stubborn streak. Nobody at City Hall recorded videos for them in the old country’s language. They figured it out because they wanted to be Americans, full stop.
That’s the problem with nation-changing immigration levels that New York’s political class refuses to face. When the numbers run this high, newcomers never feel any pressure to assimilate. Whole neighborhoods run in the language of the countries people left, and the politicians start governing in it too. Importing people means importing their culture and their habits, and eventually the city stops absorbing newcomers and starts rebuilding itself around them.
Mamdani’s Next Move Could Cost New York Even More
The mayor’s track record says he’s not slowing down. He’s called ICE a “rogue” agency. He led a coalition of cities into court against the Trump administration’s public charge rule. Now he’s recording Spanish-language coaching sessions on keeping the front door shut.
Maybe the next step is city-funded lawyers parked in every migrant shelter. Maybe it’s city workers passing out door-hanger scripts. That might be getting a little ahead of the evidence.
But LaLota already rattled off “free hotels, healthcare and lawyers for illegals” as perks New York hands out, so the city isn’t exactly starting from scratch.
And Mamdani is swimming against the country on this one. A Cygnal survey of 1,004 likely 2026 midterm voters, taken in late January 2026, found 61 percent support deporting illegal aliens, with only 34 percent opposed. The same poll found 54 percent back ICE enforcing federal immigration law, while 58 percent oppose defunding the agency.
Voters handed President Trump a mandate on mass deportations in 2024. Mamdani is running City Hall as though that election never happened.
Benny Johnson boiled the whole thing down to one sentence: “The mayor of New York sides with criminals.”
Theodore Roosevelt knew New York City government from the inside, having run the city’s police board in the 1890s before he ever reached the White House.
In a letter to the American Defense Society dated January 3, 1919, Roosevelt wrote, “We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.” He warned against letting the country become a “polyglot boarding house.” Supporters read his letter aloud at a gathering in New York on January 5, 1919, and Roosevelt died the next day.
A little more than a century later, the mayor of that same city recorded his advice on walking away from federal agents in Spanish.
Sources: Mediaite, “‘Sedition’: Mamdani Ignites Absolute Fury In MAGA World With Spanish Language Video On ICE”; The Center Square via Sinclair stations, “Mayor-elect Mamdani vows to protect immigrants, outlines rights against ICE in new video”; Executive Order 14224, “Designating English as the Official Language of the United States,” GovInfo; Florida Phoenix, “Trump signs executive order declaring English as official U.S. language”; AFP via Ahram Online; Cygnal national poll, January 27-28, 2026, via The Federalist; Chicago Daily Tribune, January 7, 1919; Theodore Roosevelt letter to the American Defense Society, January 3, 1919, via Truth or Fiction.
