Trump Threatened to Send National Guard if Mamdani Won – What Happens Now?

This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York.

If President Donald Trump makes good on his threats, Zohran Mamdani may become the first New York City mayor forced to navigate an uninvited federal deployment of the National Guard. Last month, Trump insinuated that he’d send troops to “clean up” the country’s biggest city if Mamdani won the election, as he did decisively Tuesday night. Trump administration officials have also threatened to ramp up immigration enforcement raids in the city.

On the campaign trail, Mamdani, whose campaign did not respond to questions for this article, argued that he was the candidate who would staunchly defend the five boroughs from federal law enforcement. In his victory speech on Tuesday night, he welcomed a confrontation with the president.

“Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up,” he said. “New York will remain a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants. And as of tonight, led by an immigrant. So hear me, President Trump, when I say this. To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.”

The rhetoric matched his vow during the last mayoral debate to fight Trump “every step of the way” on immigration raids by federal law enforcement. Mamdani has also praised litigation that has limited the deployment of National Guard troops in other cities and touted a “coalition” between himself, Governor Kathy Hochul, and Attorney General Letitia James “that would be on the front lines of fighting Donald Trump.”

There are relatively few precedents in United States history for Trump’s deployments of the National Guard to cities that have seen protests against his immigration policies. Critics are concerned that sending military troops — trained to fight overseas — to respond to domestic opponents of the president could suppress dissent and stoke fear among immigrant communities.

The mayor’s formal power to constrain federal troops and agents is limited: Experts and officials say that state-level action above City Hall and grassroots organizing below it offer the most promising avenues to stymie federal incursions. Yet as the city’s top official, Mamdani could bolster those efforts.

Trump has sent National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., where they’ve policed the streets, and Los Angeles, where their mission is to protect federal property and agents. He’s tried to deploy them in Chicago and Portland, Oregon, but lawsuits from state officials have scuttled those efforts so far.

Similar state-led litigation would be the most effective way of combating a National Guard deployment in New York, legal experts say.

“As a general proposition, the mayor is not the most empowered official of state or local government to push back on a National Guard deployment,” said Chris Mirasola, an assistant professor at the University of Houston Law Center and expert on domestic military deployment.

City governments can also help build the state’s legal arguments. The White House can call the National Guard into federal service when the country faces foreign invasion or a rebellion, or if the president can’t execute federal laws without them. Presidentially deployed troops are prohibited from participating in civilian law enforcement activities, such as making arrests or executing warrants.

Given those restrictions, documented facts from the ground are important to convince courts that federal claims of rebellion or rampant crime are overblown, and that troops have taken on law enforcement roles they can’t legally carry out, said Perry Grossman, supervising attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Some local officials and activists are already planning an information-gathering effort. Hands Off NYC, a coalition of unions, faith groups, and advocacy organizations, held a call last week to discuss how residents could take action to counter federal troops, including by documenting federal activity in their communities to support legal action. The mayor could use his public platform to raise awareness of those efforts, perhaps encouraging New Yorkers to use a web portal the state attorney general’s office announced last month, after a high-profile raid in Manhattan’s Chinatown, to submit videos and photos of federal activity.

That could be “a really effective mechanism for getting that information” into the hands of state attorneys to support litigation, Mirasola said.

When it comes to countering federal law enforcement conducting immigration raids, Mamdani could play a critical role in funneling resources to immigration legal services, and making sure the city’s Law Department is ready to file lawsuits, said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition.

He could also look to the leaders of other cities for inspiration. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass confronted federal agents at a park in a heavily immigrant neighborhood — part of a show of opposition that some observers credit with turning around her political fortunes. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order barring federal agents from city property for civil immigration enforcement, though some advocates want the city to do more to enforce that order.

In Chicago, as in New York, local police officers are barred from collaborating with civil immigration enforcement, but they’ve found themselves in the middle of clashes between immigration authorities and residents — and sometimes teargassed by federal agents.

The New York City Police Department could find itself similarly torn between staying out of ICE raids and maintaining order, said Scott Shuchart, who served as assistant director for regulatory affairs and policy at ICE under the Biden administration. Some degree of communication about federal activities would be helpful even as the agency does not collaborate with civil immigration enforcement, he said.

“You don’t want a shooting war between the NYPD and ICE, but you obviously need the police to actually provide public safety when you have this private army driving around the city doing whatever,” Shuchart said.

Some elected officials have said they want to see the department take a more oppositional stance, arresting federal agents if they break the law. Mamdani said last month that ICE officers should be “held to account” in those cases.

“What we have seen from ICE is that they are a reckless entity, one that cares little for the rule of law in the us, for the people who they are supposed to serve,” he said.

Calls to arrest ICE agents amounts to “grandstanding,” argued former NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton.

“That would not happen if those federal law enforcement officials are engaged in actions that are sanctioned by the attorney general, sanctioned by the federal government,” he said.

New York police officers weren’t on the scene in Chinatown when federal authorities arrested nine immigrants last month, but members of the department’s controversial Strategic Response Group were stationed at 26 Federal Plaza as protesters gathered that evening. That’s the right role for the agency, Bratton argued.

Mamdani has vowed to disband the Strategic Response Group, which has drawn complaints and lawsuits over its treatment of protesters. That could scramble the city’s playbook for responding to major demonstrations at a time when the Trump administration has cited protests to justify deploying the National Guard.

Whatever role Mamdani plays, immigrants rights’ advocates and local leaders aren’t waiting for his inauguration to begin preparing for the possibility of expanded ice raids or the deployment of the National Guard.

City Councilmember Jennifer Gutierréz, of Brooklyn, said in an interview before the election that she’s eager to see the next mayor take a strong stance against federal forces in New York City. But she pointed out that strong local opposition didn’t stop Trump from trying to send the National Guard to other cities. Litigation and other formal measures alone have limited value to counter an administration that has shown a willingness to push the bounds of the law, she argued.

At the neighborhood level, Gutierréz has been working with nonprofits and schools to disseminate information about legal rights and organize support networks that could distribute food and accompany kids to class if a federal law enforcement influx leaves immigrant residents afraid to leave their homes. The mayor could amplify those efforts, too, she said.

“I think there is 100% value in that,” she said.