Hochul: ‘I’ll be the first to call up ICE’ to deport immigrants who break the law

As President-elect Donald Trump promises mass deportations of millions of immigrants across the country, Gov. Kathy Hochul indicated on Tuesday that New York state will cooperate to at least some extent with federal immigration authorities. Hochul said that while she supports legal immigrants, including asylum-seekers, she would be “the first one” to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport undocumented immigrants who break the law. The governor would not say what steps, if any, the state would take to protect the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who are not recent arrivals seeking asylum. 

During an unrelated press conference in Queens, Hochul drew a distinction between immigrants with “legal papers” and those “who commit crimes or are known to be criminals before they arrived here.” 

“Someone breaks the law, I'll be the first one to call up ICE and say, ‘Get them out of here,’” Hochul said when asked how she would respond to Trump’s plans for mass deportations and whether New York would be a sanctuary state under her leadership. “When those are identified, I'll be the first one to help get rid of them,” she added. “I don't want them here. I don't want anybody terrorizing my citizens.”

The governor said that she would allow the asylum process to play out for eligible, law-abiding recent arrivals, and she said that she wants both asylum-seekers and those with Temporary Protected Status to receive authorization to work in the state. “Those who come here legally, we want to get them jobs,” Hochul said, adding that she supports keeping TPS for migrants who currently have it.

Hochul has previously expressed a willingness to deport immigrants accused of crimes. She said in February that a number of migrants who were accused of assaulting police officers in Times Square should be deported, even before their cases went to trial. At least one migrant who was initially arrested in connection with the assault was ultimately found to have nothing to do with the incident.

Hochul’s attempts to distinguish between good immigrants who should be protected and bad immigrants who should be deported may not matter to the incoming Trump administration, which has said that it plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants currently in the country. The president-elect has vowed to end TPS for a large number of immigrants in the country. His hand-picked border czar Tom Homan has suggested deporting entire families – including children who are United States citizens – and Trump’s incoming chief of staff Stephen Miller said the administration would “supercharge” efforts to denaturalize U.S. citizens. That could affect the more than one million New Yorkers who currently live in mixed-status households.

More than 200,000 migrants have come to New York over the past several years after entering the United States seeking asylum. Concern over how best to handle that influx of new people entering the city has driven much of the recent discussion around immigration both in New York and around the country. 

But those recent high-profile arrivals aren’t the only undocumented immigrants in New York. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants have called the state home for years. Data from the Migration Policy Institute puts the “unauthorized” population in New York as high as 835,000, while a July report from the Center for Migration Studies in July estimated that there are currently at least 470,000 undocumented immigrants in New York’s workforce. Another July report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimated that 676,000 undocumented immigrants are currently living in New York and contributing to the state’s economy. New York City alone had an estimated 476,000 undocumented immigrants living in the city in 2019, according to a January fact sheet from the city comptroller’s office. As of March 2020, the state also had over 28,000 active recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which does not grant legal permanent residency.

When asked directly whether or not she supported the deportation of undocumented immigrants whose only crimes are crossing the border or overstaying a visa, Hochul only referenced recent asylum-seekers. She mentioned immigrants “with legal papers, like they came and they’re seeking asylum” when answering the question about broader deportation efforts. But thousands of undocumented immigrants who have lived in the state for years or decades, including DACA recipients, do not have “legal papers” and are not going through the asylum process.

Hochul’s comments on Tuesday worried immigration advocates. Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, accused Hochul of “play(ing) into Trump’s dangerous games” to the detriment of New Yorkers. “Now more than ever we need leadership from Albany,” Awawdeh said in a statement. “We need New York’s elected officials to stand up for and defend all of our immigrant neighbors.” Advocates like Awawdeh have pushed lawmakers to approve legislation that would create a right to representation in immigration court, with renewed urgency in light of the incoming Trump presidency.

That bill is sponsored by Assembly Member Catalina Cruz, who offered Hochul the benefit of the doubt when asked about her remarks. “Unless you have walked in the shoes of many of us that have migrated here in search of a better life, it is difficult to understand the nuances of immigration law,” Cruz told City & State. “I am going to presume that the Governor was not speaking about law-abiding undocumented Americans that call my neighborhood their home.”

Cruz, who represents immigrant-heavy neighborhoods in Queens, is formerly undocumented herself and has called herself the first DREAMer. She came to the country at the age of nine with her mother on a tourist visa and lived for 15 years in New York without documentation. “Given the work my office has done with this administration, I have no doubt that these statements lacked context and dimension,” Cruz said of Hochul’s comments. “I know that she will remain dedicated to advancing the goal of assisting those individuals and families that have come to New York with hopes and dreams of a better life for themselves and their families.” 

Hochul suggested that her office will soon release more information regarding the state’s response to Trump’s potential mass deportation plans. “I just had a meeting this morning with my team that's been studying all the scenarios that could play out over the next few months, and what we need to do to prepare – we’ll be announcing more on that,” the governor said, adding that her office would “put out a report on what we’ve achieved in the next couple of weeks.”

Under an executive order signed by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2017, state agencies are prohibited from cooperating with federal immigration authorities or asking about immigration status in most cases. A 2020 state law prevents federal immigration agents from making arrests in state and local courthouses. New York City also has sanctuary city policies in place to prevent local law enforcement from working with ICE. But other municipalities don’t have sanctuary policies in place, and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman has said he intends to fully cooperate with Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

Hochul’s comments come as she faces criticism both from Republicans and members of her own party over her governance, which has stirred speculations about election challenges in 2026. “If Governor Hochul actually meant what she said, Laken Riley would still be alive today,” Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican weighing a run for governor, said on X. He referenced the murder of a nursing student by an undocumented immigrant that has become highly politicized by the right. “The truth is she doesn’t, and she even helped usher in NY’s sanctuary state status.”