After a confrontation outside a BK hospital, many electeds are asking: What constitutes NYPD collaboration with ICE?

In his four months in office, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said multiple times that the New York City Police Department does not collaborate or coordinate with the federal government in civil immigration enforcement.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch has said the same plenty of times over the course of her longer tenure.

New York City’s sanctuary laws broadly prohibit such collaboration.

But after a chaotic scene outside Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn on Saturday – toward the end of which NYPD officers cleared a path for ICE officers to haul a detainee into their car, and one NYPD officer closed the federal officer’s car door for him after they loaded the man inside – some local elected officials and advocates, including members of Mamdani’s progressive base, are saying such broad declarations aren’t enough.

“They provided security for ICE,” said the local Council Member Sandy Nurse, who was present for several hours of the late night and early morning enforcement action on Saturday. “From the community’s point of view, that looks like coordination. It looks like collaboration. It looks like collusion. The NYPD might not feel that way. … But there’s a question on the table of ‘What does it mean for the NYPD to provide security for ICE to leave an area with a person in custody?’”

The standoff between protesters and ICE occurred outside the medical center late Saturday when ICE agents took a man there who they had arrested earlier in the day. The man, a Nigerian immigrant named Chidozie Wilson Okeke, had requested medical attention after the agents used force in his arrest, multiple outlets reported.

The NYPD responded to the scene outside the hospital at 10:26 p.m. after receiving 911 calls about disorderly protesters, according to the police department. None of the elected officials reached by City & State disputed this sequence of events, and no one pushed back on the NYPD’s and City Hall’s statements that there was no prior coordination between ICE and the police department. 

But those elected officials took issue with how events unfolded later in the night, when officers began blocking the protesters from the ambulance bay, with one video showing police officers pushing protesters back to clear a path for ICE agents to haul Okeke out of the hospital and put him into their vehicle. An NYPD spokesperson said that they have a responsibility to clear a path if someone is blocking an emergency exit to a hospital. 

Nurse said that protesters weren’t blocking the ambulance bay for the entirety of the standoff and questioned how the NYPD knew to start forming a path for the ICE agents to exit around 2 a.m. if there hadn’t been communication between them. The NYPD spokesperson said they weren’t aware of any communication and reiterated that their officers showed up in response to 911 calls.

In one video taken during the night, one officer is shown throwing a protester to the ground. When asked about it on Monday, Mamdani called it “incredibly disturbing” and said that it was being actively investigated.

In another video shared by the New York Immigration Coalition, an NYPD captain is shown speaking with apparent protesters and appearing to call Mamdani “temporary,” “expendable” and “total nonsense.” Mamdani said on Monday that he had not seen the video, and a spokesperson didn’t answer when asked again on Tuesday. But Gothamist reported on Tuesday that the captain had been transferred to an unnamed post.

In total, eight protesters were arrested by the NYPD, for charges including resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration, reckless endangerment and criminal mischief. In the chaos, ICE agents pepper sprayed four NYPD officers, according to the police department.

While Mamdani was adamant that there was no coordination between the NYPD and ICE on Saturday night, his allies said that it looked like collaboration on the ground. 

“The NYPD must be held accountable for their continuous violence against protestors,” New York City Democratic Socialists of America co-chair Gustavo Gordillo said in a statement. “We need to prevent any possible collaboration between ICE and NYPD legislatively and we need to disband the (Strategic Response Group) yesterday. ICE out of NY.”

Assembly Member Claire Valdez, a democratic socialist who Mamdani endorsed to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez in the Brooklyn-Queens congressional district that includes the Wyckoff hospital, said in a statement Monday afternoon that the police department “cannot collaborate with a rogue federal agency terrorizing our neighborhoods.”

“We need a full investigation into any NYPD contact with ICE that night, clear and public guidelines for how NYPD responds to protests of federal immigration enforcement, and accountability for the actions taken that night,” she added in another statement. 

Earlier in the day on Monday, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who is also running for Velázquez’s seat, held an “emergency” press conference with Nurse, neighboring Council Member Jennifer Gutiérrez and others calling for ICE to end enforcement actions in New York. “This idea that the NYPD would be involved in any way in supporting (ICE’s) work in any way is very frustrating,” Reynoso told City & State later. 

Those congressional candidates’ comments on the ICE action and protest response have been closely watched in the context of the race. Reynoso noted that he didn’t wait to make a statement about the protest response until after Mamdani, a dig at Valdez, who put out a statement later on Monday. Council Member Julie Won, who is also running for the congressional seat, denounced ICE’s actions on Monday afternoon.

Some of the people who expressed frustration with the NYPD’s response to the ICE action didn’t offer specific prescriptions for what the department should do differently in a situation where protesters are blocking an emergency exit which the NYPD said they are obligated to clear. 

Reynoso said that the NYPD showing up for crowd control – in this case, to make sure people aren’t entering the hospital and to keep people safe – is fine. “What they shouldn’t have done is escorting and supporting ICE as they brought the detainee into the car, helping them close the door to the car,” he said. “That image is a tough image to see.”

But several people called for more clarity from the administration and the NYPD about what is and isn’t part of the NYPD’s protocol in a situation like this. Nurse said that her own community is left confused when they’re told that the NYPD doesn’t collaborate with ICE on civil enforcement and then witnesses the events of Saturday night. “People from the neighborhood are like, ‘Was the 83rd (precinct) helping ICE? And I’m like, ‘I can’t answer that actually,’” Nurse said. “In the big, macro level, no they were not. But on that particular night, when they needed to leave with that man when ICE was clearly outnumbered and needed to leave with that man, yes, they did help them. It’s confusing.”

“We need to know, when you’re called to something, are you there to stand with them? Or are you there to stand with us and keep us safe, keep the people safe?” added Gutiérrez, who attended a briefing with the 83rd precinct in Brooklyn on Monday about the incident. “I still don’t have an answer.”

The Mamdani administration has suggested that more clarity could be forthcoming. Mamdani signed an executive order in early February that requires the NYPD along with other agencies to audit their internal policies and guidelines about interacting with non-local law enforcement agencies conducting immigration enforcement. Those audits are due to be submitted to City Hall on Thursday.

“We are going to continue to actively examine what our response protocols are when ICE is present to ensure that we're handling these situations appropriately,” Mamdani said on Monday.

New York Immigration Coalition President Murad Awawdeh said that he thinks the city’s sanctuary policies need stricter enforcement. “I think we’re going to have to come back and strengthen them,” Awawdeh said. “We have to start clearly delineating what is black and what is white. This gray area of operating just isn’t going to work.”