The first meeting of the Immigration Justice Committee, one of 17 groups the mayor-elect has assembled to advise on his transition to City Hall, is expected to take place at the end of this week. It will work “to develop the best path forward for upholding and strengthening our sanctuary policies,” a spokesperson said. 

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announcing members of his transition team last month. (X/ZohranKMamdani)

The mayor-elect’s transition committee has raised about $3 million, and is getting ready to start talking policy.

About 400 experts and advocates, serving on 17 committees, are working with the Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team, and will give policy recommendations and suggest appointments for the incoming administration.

After weeks of planning, the first meeting of the Immigration Justice Committee is expected to take place at the end of this week. It will be led by Grace Bonilla, CEO of the nonprofit United Way of New York City. 

“Through the Committee on Immigrant Justice, we are engaging leaders from local and state government, nonprofits, labor, academia, business, and other sectors to develop the best path forward for upholding and strengthening our sanctuary policies,” said Monica Klein, a transition team spokesperson, in a statement.

Mamdani’s campaign platform included a pledge to strengthen New York’s set of sanctuary laws, which the city began enacting in the late 1980s. 

They stipulate the circumstances under which the NYPD and the NYC Department of Correction may detain people at the behest of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and how and when city government agencies can interact and share information with ICE.

Supporters say such policies help ensure immigrant New Yorkers don’t have to live in the shadows, particularly when it comes to reporting crimes and other abuses. But the Trump administration has targeted cities with sanctuary laws on the books as impediments to his immigration enforcement efforts, even suing New York City over it in July. 

With Donald Trump’s return to the White House this year, ICE arrests of immigrants have surged in New York City and nationwide. On Monday, Mayor-elect Mamdani used his platform to provide residents with an explanation of their rights in the event of an ICE encounter. 

According to a New York Immigration Coalition report, the number of “community arrests”—in which people are apprehended in their homes, at work, or on street corners—have jumped statewide since Trump took office.

Those types of arrests are now five times more common than arrests through collaborations with local or state police, or arrests related to other task forces—tactics more commonly under the Biden administration, the report says.

Advocates and City Council members in neighborhoods with high concentrations of immigrants have seen an increase in ICE activity in all the boroughs.

Mamdani’s Immigration Justice transition committee is made up of 25 leaders from major immigrant advocacy groups (such as Murad Awawdeh of the New York Immigration Coalition, Natalia Aristizabal of Make the Road and Amaha Kassa of African Communities Together); large legal services providers (such as Melissa Chua of NYLAG and Rosa Cohen-Cruz of the Bronx Defenders); grassroots organizations (such as Fahd Ahmed of DRUM and Adama Bah of Afrikana); faith leaders (such as Imam Shamsi Ali of the Jamaica Muslim Center and Rabbi Rachel Timoner of Congregation Beth Elohim), as well as Bitta Mostofi, former commissioner for the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA). 

A Mamdani spokesperson would not comment on who is being considered to lead MOIA under the new administration.

Aristizabal, the deputy director of Make the Road NY, said she plans to push for two main priorities on behalf of the organization: city government’s compliance with sanctuary laws, and a city hotline for residents to report ICE activity.

“We want to make sure that the sanctuary policies are clear for the agencies,” Aristizabal said. 

The City’s Department of Investigations recently found that a Department of Correction investigator twice shared information—violating sanctuary laws—about two city jail detainees with U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents.

New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) created a “transition memo” for Mamdani, calling for the incoming mayor to ensure all agencies comply with existing rules. The group supports passage of Intro. 214, which would allow residents to sue if local officials violate sanctuary laws by working with ICE to detain people.

The second idea that Ariztizabal wants to bring to the committee’s attention is the development of a hotline for New Yorkers to report ICE activities. This could be similar to the rapid response networks set up in various California counties, she said, and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights “Eyes on ICE” Network—a text alert system for community members about ICE sightings and activities in their area. 

“Once you report to the hotline, they connect to a rapid response unit that then is able to verify what’s happening on the ground. And it’s a structure and resource activity for being able to track how ICE is acting in those states,” Ariztizabal explained. “I just feel like it’s the time for New York to set that up.”

The Trump administration has criticized public ICE reporting mechanisms as a threat to federal officers’ safety, and recently got tech giant Apple to remove apps that crowdsource such information.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Daniel@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

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By MATT BROWN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House on Thursday dismissed an effort to impeach President Donald Trump brought by Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas, the second time this year that the Democrat’s efforts to launch impeachment proceedings have been turned aside.

The House voted 237-140 to shelve Green’s impeachment resolution, with 47 Democratic lawmakers voting present. The result was expected, yet suggested a shift in support for bringing charges of impeachment against Trump among House Democrats, who rejected a similar measure by a much wider margin in June.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his deputies said in a statement before the vote that impeachment “requires a comprehensive investigative process” that had not been undertaken by the Republican majority. Yet the Democratic leaders notably declined to oppose the resolution outright, instead voting “present.”

“Impeachment is a sacred constitutional vehicle designed to hold a corrupt executive accountable for abuse of power, breaking the law and violating the public trust,” they said.

“None of that serious work has been done, with the Republican majority focused solely on rubber stamping Donald Trump’s extreme agenda. Accordingly, we will be voting ‘present’ on today’s motion,” they continued.

Green has said impeachment measures are necessary because he believes Trump has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” in his second term, the constitutionally required bar for impeachment and removal from office.

Green’s resolution in June accused Trump of bypassing Congress and potentially declaring war on Iran after the administration conducted air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. The latest version sought to impeach Trump for “threatening Democratic lawmakers in Congress with execution” over a social media video urging members of the military to refuse illegal orders.

“He has conducted himself in office such that persons are now threatening members of the judiciary, threatening members of the House of Representatives, threatening members of the Senate,” Green said in a brief floor speech before the vote.

Trump was impeached twice in his first term, first in 2019 by a Democratic-majority House over his push for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to open a corruption investigation into the Biden family ahead of the 2020 election. He was impeached a second time in 2021 by the House over his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the riot at the U.S. Capitol. He was acquitted by the Senate both times.

Republicans have begun to warn that Democrats are determined to impeach Trump a third time if they win the majority, pushing it toward the forefront of next year’s campaigns. Many of them dismissed Thursday’s vote as a distraction.

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“It shows you they have no agenda. And so this is the kind of stuff that they’ve been doing, as opposed to actually trying to solve the American people’s issues,” said Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, a Florida Republican. “This is not a surprise, but it just shows you that the Democrats continue to do the same kind of thing they’ve been doing for years, which is playing games and not coming up with real solutions.”

Democratic leaders insisted they are not intent on impeaching Trump in his second term and stressed the gravity of such proceedings and the need for a thorough investigation.

Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat and vice chair of the Democratic Caucus, said there are “a diversity of views” about impeachment in the caucus. He said that House Democrats intend to conduct oversight of the administration should they win a majority in next year’s midterms but that a win at the ballot box did not guarantee an impeachment vote.

“I think you would have to have an investigation where you actually talk to witnesses and review documents and look at, you know, video and listen to audio. You need to do all of that before any decisions are made,” he said.

By GABRIELA AOUN ANGUEIRA, Associated Press

A meeting by a council appointed by President Donald Trump that was meant to announce recommended reforms to the Federal Emergency Management Agency was abruptly canceled Thursday, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The FEMA Review Council, which has been meeting for months to try to overhaul FEMA and was set to make its final report public at the meeting, was scheduled to gather Thursday afternoon at 1 p.m. EST. Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem, the council’s co-chair, left a Congressional hearing early because she said she needed to attend it.

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The Department of Homeland Security referred questions about the meeting’s cancellation to the White House, which did not respond to requests for comment. The person familiar with the development, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly, did not give a reason for the cancellation.

Two hours after the meeting’s planned start time, a council administrator notified people who had signed up to watch that it was postponed. The administrator gave no reason for the change, and said a new date would be announced “as soon as possible.”

Trump created the FEMA Review Council by executive order in late January, the same day he proposed eliminating FEMA after touring destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. He has threatened to dismantle the agency and has repeatedly said he wants to push more responsibility for disaster preparedness, response and recovery to the states.

Council members were to present and vote on a recommendations report at the Thursday meeting. The public was invited to attend virtually and would have until Dec. 31 to submit comment on the report.

Former officials and experts told The Associated Press they were impressed by the level of care taken by the council to solicit input from experts and community members and craft meaningful reforms, but the process grew more contentious as it reached its end.

An initial draft of the much-anticipated report was slashed by Noem’s office from over 160 pages to around 20, people familiar with the developments told the AP in November, leading some council members to worry that some recommendations would be removed while others not endorsed by the council could be added.

The council is co-chaired by Noem and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Its 12 members include emergency managers and elected officials almost exclusively from Republican-led states, including the emergency management directors of Texas and Florida, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant.

If he embraces the reforms, Trump has the authority to implement some changes himself, while others would require an act of Congress.