Markwayne Mullin didn’t just come to New York City on Tuesday to tout ICE’s arrest of 2,000 immigrants in the Big Apple over the last month. He apparently also came to lie about New York.
The Homeland Security secretary disparaged New York, America’s largest city, as “crime-ridden,” in his words, while using the Sept. 1 press conference at 26 Federal Plaza as a soapbox to deride what he called the “liberal government” under the leadership of Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Mullin was particularly ornery over their recent efforts to withdraw local enforcement cooperation with ICE’s ongoing immigration crackdown and the city’s more than two-decade-old “sanctuary city” policies protecting immigrants, regardless of their status, living in the Big Apple. On that front, his grievances over that were no surprise, given his political leanings.
But for Mullin to stand before the press, representing the federal government, and slur New York as a “crime-ridden city” that somehow needs the federal government to “restore law and order” is just insulting beyond belief. And it’s a flat-out lie.
Worse, it’s also a slap in the face at the New York Police Department, the best police force in the country, because it has brought crime down tremendously over the past three decades, and especially this year. Murders and shootings fell to record-low levels year-to-date through July. Overall crime is also dropping to pre-pandemic levels.
New York streets are full of life. The subways are teeming with commuters. Hotels are full of visitors and restaurants are full of patrons. Real estate values are up, and businesses are opening all across this city.
All of these positive developments are due, in no small part, to the NYPD’s ability to keep law and order on the streets of this great city — even with a staffing shortage.
Mullin sought to highlight a few of the “rotten apples” that ICE agents have arrested during operations in New York over the past month. He picked a handful of cases involving real criminals who truly have no business being in the U.S. — murderers, rapists, drug traffickers, sex criminals, etc.
The fact, however, is that the “worst of the worst” only represents a small percentage of the thousands of people whom ICE has detained in New York.
Trump’s crackdown has seen thousands more undocumented men, women, and children without criminal records being hauled away by masked ICE agents over immigration law infractions.
The crackdown, as a result, has perpetuated a climate of fear among the many immigrant communities of New York that encourages people to live in the shadows for fear of being one day asked to “show their papers” or else.
That isn’t “law and order” by any acceptable definition in a nation like ours. ICE, under the leadership of Trump and Mullin, has failed to keep Americans truly safe through its reckless crackdown targeting every immigrant here without proper documentation.
If Mullin wants to practice what he preaches about law and order, he should start getting his own house in order by telling ICE to leave undocumented immigrants without criminal records alone.