Democratic cities are building a wall against ICE, and it matters for Asian Americans

Democratic local officials are mounting a coordinated resistance to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement as operations in Minnesota begin to cool down.

What they’re doing: Over the past few weeks, mayors in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Oakland and Seattle have issued executive orders restricting Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) access to city property and banning agents from wearing masks.

New York’s Zohran Mamdani has gone the furthest, barring non-city law enforcement from using city-owned property as staging areas or operations bases while also hosting fellow mayors, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, to coordinate next steps. Roughly a dozen prosecutors led by Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner have also warned that ICE agents who commit crimes on the job will face local charges, while Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed a law last week banning local immigration enforcement agreements statewide.

At the state level, the resistance extends well beyond Maryland. Gov. Abigail Spanberger canceled the ICE cooperation pacts her Republican predecessor had signed in Virginia, though she left existing local sheriff contracts intact, while the state Senate has separately passed a bill to restrict future 287(g) agreements. New Mexico banned ICE detention facility contracts and barred local agencies from carrying out immigration enforcement, while a similar ban in Maine had already taken effect last month. In Philadelphia, the “ICE Out” bill, backed by the majority of council members, would ban agents from wearing masks, bar unmarked vehicles and block ICE from entering city property.

Why this matters: The resistance is a direct response to Operation Metro Surge, the 10-week federal dragnet in Minnesota that swept up thousands of people, left two U.S. citizens dead and prompted a federal judge to rule that ICE had violated detainees’ right to counsel.

The crackdown accelerated a shift already underway, with Asian American opposition to Trump’s immigration agenda rising from 58% to roughly 70% last year, driven by fears of racial profiling and the risks faced by legal immigrants navigating lengthy green card backlogs. Adding to those concerns, a DHS memo issued last week authorizes ICE to detain refugees who remain without green cards one year after admission, even without a criminal record.

The big picture: The broader enforcement push tests constitutional limits in real time. The 287(g) program, which deputizes local officers as immigration agents, has expanded 10-fold since Trump returned to office, backed in part by $150 billion in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).

Resistance efforts have also intensified, from the Public Rights Project advising municipalities on legally sound orders to Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who has challenged ICE for nearly a year, slamming masked agents as “secret police” and issuing an executive order requiring regular FOIA requests for ICE arrest records.