“Mamdani: Abolishing ICE is the most 'acceptable' part of DSA platform to 'mainstream America'”, 8 November 2026 (Photo via The Hill — the original report)
As it ran on the front
The wall between what a homeless man tells a city shelter intake desk and what ends up in a federal deportation file is dead, as of this past Friday, when U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration to hand ICE the names of male residents at the Bruckner shelter in Mott Haven. It was born sometime in the unwritten understanding that a city too proud to turn a man away from a cot in January would not then turn around and tell Washington where he slept. It is survived by the subpoena that outlived it, and by the roster now being compiled to answer it.
The order did not arrive out of nowhere; it arrived at the end of a week that has its own order of events, and the order matters. The next morning, Monday, St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue held a funeral for nine homeless men who froze to death on the city's streets between December and February, their bodies unclaimed, their ashes going into the Resurrection Chapel on a few donors' dime. The mayor did not attend. By Tuesday his absence was its own story, filed under the heat he was already taking for how City Hall handled the freeze that killed them. By Friday, four days later, the subpoena had an answer, and the answer was yes.…
…(cont) Three public positions are now on the record inside one week — the interview, the skipped funeral, and the court order that stands — and not one of the three tells a shelter resident which rule applies: the mayor who calls ICE's abolition the easy ask, or the city attorney's office that hands ICE his name when a federal judge asks. Both are now Mamdani's administration. The malarkey of a platform position does not keep a January wind off a church step, and it has not, this week, kept a subpoena off an intake form either.
Preceded in death by the plain idea that a shelter roster and a target list are not the same document. Survived by Judge Kaplan's order, by whoever is still sleeping at Bruckner tonight, and by a count that was nine as of Monday and is not guaranteed to hold at nine.
In lieu of flowers, a public accounting — from the city, not a subpoena response filed under seal — of how many names went to ICE, and how many beds are left for the next freeze.
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“The mayor goes on Fox News and says killing ICE off is the one DSA idea even conservative America can swallow, then six days later his own lawyers hand ICE a shelter roster — that's not a contradiction, that's the whole operation, the TV version and the courtroom version, same week. He skipped the funeral for nine guys who froze on the sidewalk the day after he taped that interview, and none of this week's three public statements connect those dots out loud. The city will shelter you, count your body if it comes to that, and hand your name to the people who can deport you — and still call all three compassion.”
“Look — this is a routine subpoena, standard enforcement paperwork, nothing more happening here. Did I say nothing's happening? Scratch that — it's lawful, a federal judge signed off on it, due process working exactly like it's supposed to. If you want to talk about who's out of step this week, look at the mayor going on Fox News calling abolition the mainstream position the same week his own department has to comply with the subpoena.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) said that of all the platform items belonging to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which he is a member, the most "acceptable part" for "mainstream America" is abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Mamdani appeared on "Fox News Sunday" for an interview recorded Wednesday…
Republicans' reconciliation package puts $70 billion into ICE's department NBC News, May 2026
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled Friday that the city must comply with a subpoena from ICE to provide identifying information for some male residents at the Bruckner shelter in Mott Haven.
This past Monday, thanks to the generosity of a few donors, St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue held a funeral for nine men who died on the streets of New York between December and February. Their bodies were unclaimed, and so their ashes were laid to rest in the church’s Resurrection Chapel.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.
