Zohran Mamdani pledged to spend more than $100 million expanding legal defense services for immigrants facing deportation while praising New York City’s sanctuary policies. The Democrat mayor said roughly 400,000 city residents were at “urgent risk of deportation” and argued that the city should use its legal resources to help them remain in New York. He also promised to add 200 employees to the city’s Law Department.
Mamdani made the remarks during a September 2025 appearance on MSNBC’s “The Weekend: Primetime,” where the self-described democratic socialist discussed how his administration would respond to federal immigration enforcement. He presented New York City’s sanctuary status as a public-safety policy and described additional legal spending as a way to keep families together. The proposal was part of his campaign’s broader effort to strengthen the city’s refusal to assist in deportations.
“Our campaign is one that stands by the actual enforcement of the law as it is here in New York City, with sanctuary city policies that have kept us safe,” Mamdani said. He did not describe the city’s restrictions on cooperation with federal immigration authorities as an obstacle to enforcing the law. Instead, he placed those policies at the center of his campaign’s approach and promised to reinforce them with additional city personnel.
In the clip posted by RNC Research, Mamdani said he would rebuild the city Law Department to its pre-pandemic staffing level. “I would also commit to increasing the staffing of our law department by 200 to bring us back to pre-COVID levels,” he said. Mamdani added that the expansion would ensure the city was “using every tool at our disposal to keep New Yorkers together, to keep families together.”
“400,000 of our residents are right now in urgent risk of deportation,” Mamdani said. He claimed that immigrants who receive city-provided legal assistance are far more likely to return home to their families rather than be removed from the country. “The city knows that when it provides legal assistance to those same New Yorkers, their chances of going home increase elevenfold,” Mamdani continued.
He then criticized the limited reach of the city’s existing assistance, saying, “And yet, it has only assisted fewer than 200 of those New Yorkers.” Mamdani used the gap between those two figures to justify a major increase in government-funded deportation defense.
Watch Mamdani lay out his plan here:
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Mamdani then announced that increased funding for the legal services would be one of the campaign’s defining promises. “That’s why also a cornerstone of our campaign is a commitment to increase funding for those very legal defense services by more than $100 million,” he said. During the excerpt, he did not explain where the additional money would come from or provide a program-by-program breakdown of the proposed spending.
The plan combined two separate expansions: 200 additional Law Department employees and more than $100 million in added funding for legal defense services. Mamdani tied both commitments directly to fighting deportations and preserving the city’s sanctuary policies. His remarks made clear that the proposal involved a larger city legal operation rather than simply maintaining the existing rules.
Mamdani closed by returning to the language of safety and welcoming immigrants facing removal. He said the additional spending was needed “so that we can ensure we’re taking every step we can to keep New Yorkers safe, to keep New Yorkers together, and to show the world that they are welcome in this city.”