Dem
47
GOP
53
The ICE showdown in Minneapolis was just the warmup. Now comes the main round. Border Czar Tom Homan has announced that the biggest ICE deployment ever will soon happen in New York City. It could be quite a faceoff.
New Yorkers are famously confrontational and will likely be backed by both Mayor Zohran Mandami (D-New York City) and Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), who just signed a bill banning law enforcement officers from wearing masks and banning local law enforcement from engaging in immigration enforcement. If an ICE agent shows up in a mask, he or she is violating state law and conceivably could be arrested for that. Homan warned Hochul not to sign the bill but she didn't budge and signed it anyway. It could get tense, at the very least. Virginia, New Jersey and California have similar laws.
New York City has no shortage of reporters or media outlets, so a battle royale there pitting the mayor, the governor and the people against ICE will get massive worldwide publicity. If some ICE agent gets trigger happy and shoots a protester, that will become a major incident and could affect the midterms, especially if the shootee is a pretty young unarmed woman just exercising her constitutional rights. Homan is on the spot here because Trump wants a show of maximum force to distract everyone from Epstein, Iran, and the Blanche nomination. Homan is not by nature a hothead who seeks out fights, but if Trump pushes him hard to start a big fight at risk of losing his job, he might do it, with unpredictable consequences. (V)