Editor’s note: To turn your back on immigrants is to turn your back on New York

As he wades deeper into President Donald Trump’s sphere of loyalty, New York City Mayor Eric Adams is testing the bounds of what his moderate, working-class, Democratic base will tolerate. Each day, he probes a little further toward a place where, in the words of the Rev. Al Sharpton, hitherto an essential ally, he will have “crossed the Rubicon.”

Last week, New York City Council Member Susan Zhuang helped the mayor find that line. Zhuang, who was elected in 2023 to represent the first Asian-majority district in the council, is a member of the council’s conservative Common Sense Caucus. She was elected as a Democrat in an area of southern Brooklyn that chose Donald Trump in November, and she has been quoted saying, “My ideas are the ideas of the Republican Party.” But when border czar Tom Homan came to meet with Adams and other leaders in New York City, Zhuang, an immigrant from China, notably skipped meeting with the Trump official. “No one can ever tell me about the challenges faced by newcomers to New York and to this nation,” Zhuang wrote to City & State reporter Annie McDonough. “Decent hardworking people should be left alone. We need them. Not every immigrant is a criminal. Find the criminals and deport them, yes. But leave decent hardworking families alone.” 

Immigrants in New York City make up about 40% of the population – more than 3 million people. More than 470,000 New Yorkers are undocumented, according to the comptroller’s office. Four of Adams’ mayoral challengers are either an immigrant themselves or a child of immigrants. Adams has taken pains to do outreach to every nationality in the city, sometimes to the point of parody.

This is why the experience of seeing Adams sit next to Homan on “Fox & Friends” and acquiesce to blatantly anti-immigrant rhetoric is one of second-hand humiliation. Homan calls sanctuary cities a “sanctuary of criminals,” but Adams knows New York. He knows the immigrants who make this city function. Or at least he used to when he was still on this side of the Rubicon.