An ICE agent appeared to tase a man several times while another agent tried to forcefully drag him out of his car as the man screams in pain and begs for help, as captured in a video obtained by THE CITY.

ICE agents later took that man to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center for medical treatment, in what became a tense, hours-long standoff Saturday night into the early hours of Sunday morning, with protesters and NYPD officers outside the hospital.

In a statement sent hours after THE CITY first published this story, an unnamed spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security disputed that the man had been tased. “This criminal was NOT tased by law enforcement,” he wrote.  

The video, captured by bystanders, shows a masked agent appearing to fire a taser at the man, who is seated in the driver’s seat of a white car with the door open. The man screams in pain as popping sounds are heard, while repeatedly asking to talk to a lawyer and pleading for help from nearby witnesses. 

At one point the agent appears to use a knife to cut the man’s seatbelt. 

“Somebody help me,” the man can be heard screaming. “They are killing me.”

A subsequent video shows the man lying on the ground continuing to scream as agents handcuff him.

On Sunday, an unnamed spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security had identified the man arrested that night as a Nigerian national named Chidozie Wilson Okeke, who they said had prior arrests for assault and criminal drug possession and had overstayed a tourist visa. 

The spokesperson said Okeke “became physically combative attempting to punch and elbow ICE officers” and had “refused to comply with officers’ lawful commands to exit the vehicle and weaponized his vehicle to attempt to hit ICE officers.”

“Our officers followed their training and used the minimum amount of force necessary to make the arrest,” the spokesperson, who declined to be named, said.

Ivan Carrion, a 35-year-old who lives on the block, said he heard a car window smash from his apartment above in the late afternoon Saturday and rushed to the window to see what was going on.

“They were choking him, hitting him, trying to get him out of the car,” and the agents had bashed his car window, Carrion said. 

The struggle went on for  minutes, he recalled, while the man screamed in pain. Eventually the agents handcuffed the man and drove him away in another vehicle, as one of the agents jumped into the man’s car and drove it away.

“I just didn’t know they were able to forcefully force themselves into somebody’s car and pull him out like that,” he told THE CITY on Monday. “I never seen that before.”

Two days after the arrest, crumbled glass from the car window still lay strewn on the roadway. 

An NYPD spokesperson didn’t return a request for comment on Okeke’s arrest history right away.

Okeke’s arrest precipitated a chaotic standoff outside Wyckoff Heights Medical Center when activists got word of ICE’s presence at the hospital and rushed to the scene.

As the demonstrators arrived, federal agents pepper-sprayed several of them, eyewitnesses told THE CITY. While agents were inside with Okeke, who was being treated in the emergency room, the crowd of protesters grew, staying outside the hospital until early morning Sunday.

“There is an ICE agent detaining your neighbors inside,” one demonstrator chanted to the crowd. “Your neighbor is currently being abducted.”

At one point, an agent left the hospital in a sedan — speeding through a crowd of demonstrators trying to block the car. Later, at around 2 a.m., video from FreedomNewsTV showed the ICE agents dragging Okeke out of the hospital in handcuffs and thrusting him into a car, while NYPD officers cleared the way from the raucous crowd. 

An unnamed NYPD spokesperson said they’d arrested nine people over the course of the evening, charging eight with resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration while giving a ninth person a summons. 

Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who was outside the hospital until early Sunday morning said she witnessed what “appeared to be direct coordination between ICE and the NYPD, with officers cordoning off the ambulance bay to allow ICE to move the individual into their vehicles and leave.”

A spokesperson for the NYPD said they did not participate in the earlier ICE operation.

Asked about the situation at a press conference Monday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said “NYPD officers were not dispatched to the hospital to participate or facilitate an ICE operation. Rather, they were responding to 911 calls regarding a protest outside of the hospital.”

“And as I’ve made very clear that our laws leave nothing, no room for interpretation about the fact that our NYPD will not participate in civil immigration enforcement,” Mamdani said, calling ICE raids cruel and inhumane.

Murad Awawdeh, the President and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, denounced the violent arrest and called for an investigation into how the NYPD handled the situation. 

“ICE has put New Yorkers in the hospital through their violent and unlawful tactics – and DHS constantly lies to the American public to justify terrorizing, brutalizing, and even killing people,” he said. 

“This weekend, when a New Yorker was put in the hospital by ICE – while he repeatedly asked to speak to his lawyer – they once again showed their disregard for the law and their disrespect for immigrant New Yorkers’ lives.”

Katie Honan contributed additional reporting.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this article said that ICE agents had tased Okeke. ICE has since denied he was tased.

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Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday shot down a request by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin to change a tax credit to help fill a $5.4 billion city budget deficit.

Mamdani and Menin had asked state lawmakers to authorize changes to the pass-through entity tax, or PTET, which allows some business people to keep state and local tax deductions that were limited by a 2017 federal tax law. The mayor and speaker said the changes would generate an estimated $1 billion in revenue for the city.

But Hochul said she sees the proposed PTET cut as a personal tax increase. 

“That’s why it’s not happening,” she said at an unrelated event outside Albany. “We’re not changing PTET.”

Menin and Mamdani, appearing in the City Hall rotunda at their the first joint press conference since they began their contentious budget negotiations, also announced an extension of the city budget, which is due May 1, until May 12. The state budget, which was due April 1, is nearly a month late.

“A crisis of this scale cannot be solved without state action,” the mayor said. “Speaker Menin and I have already identified meaningful savings and we will continue that work carefully, deliberately and without cutting the services that New Yorkers rely on. But we cannot do it alone.”

Hochul took issue with that framing.

“What you’re doing is independent of our budget process,” she said. “We don’t have to be done in order for you to do yours. We’re on different timetables.” Cities and towns typically set their budgets after the state budget is completed, so they know how much aid they’ll be getting from Albany. 

“I think it’s crystal clear that we already have helped them,” Hochul said, pointing to $4 billion in assistance the state agreed to provide the city in this budget cycle, as well as the agreement for a new tax on luxury second homes in New York City.

Hochul, who is running for reelection this year, said Mamdani and Menin need “to do what every other city has had to do,” by looking at expenses and identifying the line items growing exponentially. 

To save money, Mamdani has floated holding off on mandates to shrink class sizes and is fighting a lawsuit that would require the city to expand its rental voucher system.

He and Menin also asked the legislature to allow the city to reduce planned payments to the city’s five pension funds that are being made to make up for years of underfunding.

“There is no amount of savings that will absolve Albany from the partnership that’s required to get all of us to a balanced budget by the end of this process,” Mamdani said.

Trump Tax Law Work-Around

The PTET was instituted after the 2017 Trump tax cuts that sharply limited the state and local tax deduction. States like New York allowed people who owned closely held businesses or partnerships to pay state and local income taxes directly from their businesses, preserving the full federal tax deduction.

The state and local income tax payments were the same as if they paid the tax on their personal returns, but their federal taxes would be lower. The Mamdani-Menin plan would amount to a state and local tax increase for those people. The leaders said the proposed PTET change, from a full credit to 75%, would be temporary, though they did not name a timeline.

Mamdani described the PTET as “essentially a loophole that allows high-income earners to reduce their federal tax burden.”

In addition to the PTET changes, Menin and Mamdani also called on Albany to restore state Aid and Incentives to Municipalities funding, which the state stopped during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. They said it would amount to about $400 million per year.

Hochul, however, threw cold water on that ask, too, saying the state provides AIM funding for municipalities with property tax caps — and New York City does not have such a cap.

Mayor and Speaker Aligned

Menin and Mamdani’s joint request marks a turning point for the duo, who had been in opposition as city budget negotiations took shape.

The Council slammed the mayor’s last-resort pitch in February to increase property taxes, which would require approval from the 51-member body.  

Mamdani later criticized the Council’s response to his preliminary budget, saying their savings plan – which filled a more than $5 billion deficit without taking from the city’s reserves, finding savings elsewhere – was “unrealistic.”

Still, on Tuesday, the two leaders struck the same note, emphasizing that New York City contributes over 55% of the state’s revenues but gets back 42% in return.

“Despite being the economic engine of the state, the city sends billions of dollars to Albany each year and sends more than it receives in return,” Menin said. “We must finally address this imbalance.”

Greg David and Katie Honan contributed reporting.

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Around 11 p.m. one night in January, a Long Island couple was driving back to their home in Hicksville when Nassau County police pulled them over for having a suspended registration. The officers searched the car and claimed to have found drugs inside. 

The couple was held overnight at the precinct. The next morning, police released the woman with a desk appearance ticket. 

But as the woman waited outside for her boyfriend, she saw him walk out shackled with an officer who said he was with the FBI, according to a description of his arrest submitted in a federal habeas corpus petition filed in the Eastern District of New York. He called her from immigration detention later that day, having apparently been passed off from Nassau County Police to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

The man’s lawyer didn’t immediately return a request for comment; neither did the Nassau County Police Department.

The case is one of three dozen arrests identified by THE CITY in a review of habeas petitions filed in federal courts in New York City and New Jersey between October 2025 and March of this year in which local police departments allegedly collaborated with ICE to apprehend unsuspecting immigrants.

The cases all took place in cities and towns on Long Island and in counties north of New York City that lack sanctuary city protections, leaving local law enforcement there free to share information with ICE and to coordinate operations. 

Most of the cases occurred in Nassau County, where the sheriff and police departments have expansive agreements with ICE that deputize them to conduct immigration enforcement. Many of the arrests identified by THE CITY, however, involved local police and probation officers tipping off ICE agents, rather than making arrests themselves.

THE CITY found several cases in Port Chester, Mount Vernon and Monticello, none of which have formal agreements with the Department of Homeland Security. There, local police or probation departments allegedly tipped off ICE to undocumented immigrants they had encountered. 

THE CITY’s report comes as the state legislature is in final deliberations over the New York for All Act, a bill that would limit cooperation between local police departments and federal immigration authorities, except in certain circumstances. The legislation, sponsored by State Senator Andrew Gounardes (D-Brooklyn) and Assemblymember Karines Reyes (D-The Bronx), has dozens of co-sponsors and the backing of a number of immigrants rights groups and the NYCLU.

Gov. Kathy Hochul initially countered with a more limited proposal that would end contracts with local jails and the 287(g) agreements that deputize local officers to perform immigration enforcement. On Thursday she offered a new proposal that went further, restricting communication between local authorities and ICE unless there was “probable cause” of a misdemeanor or felony crime.

“This is not done, it’s an important step forward,” Hochul said at a press briefing.

Immigration advocates say the proposal still leaves too much to the discretion of local police officers — and, in some cases, could open the door to more collaboration than is currently allowed. Yasmine Farhang, Executive Director of the Immigrant Defense Project, which has been tracking cases of collusion between local governments and ICE, called Hochul’s current proposal “deeply dangerous.” 

“Doing this would create more harm than the status quo,” she said.

On X, Gounardes pointed to the recent viral video of police beating up a man in a bodega in Brooklyn. 

“Police thought they had probable cause to arrest someone, used unjustifiable force on him, and had the wrong guy,” he wrote. “Letting police collude with ICE if they think there is probable cause a crime occurred will harm immigrants, and people who look like immigrants.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security criticized New York’s attempt to limit coordination with federal law enforcement. “Partnerships with law enforcement are critical to having the resources we need to arrest criminal illegal aliens across the country,” an unnamed spokesperson said. 

ICE Came Instead

THE CITY identified 11 cases in Nassau County in which a local probation department tipped ICE off that an immigrant would be coming in for an appointment. Five of those involved a person on probation for driving while under the influence. Newsday has previously reported that Nassau probation officers are regularly tipping off ICE officers about immigrants showing up for probation appointments. 

Local police in Nassau County appear to have notified ICE in 11 other cases reviewed by THE CITY. Seven of these took place on streets and highways, where cops stopped cars to arrest people and later handed them off to ICE.

In some cases, immigrants described waiting for police and a tow truck after minor car crashes. ICE came instead.

Spokespeople for the Nassau County Police and for County Executive Bruce Blakeman — who’s also the Republican gubernatorial nominee running against Hochul — didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Blakeman’s campaign released a statement after Hochul introduced her proposal on Thursday charging her with “allowing dangerous criminals to return to our neighborhoods.”

More than 140 people have been arrested by ICE on Long Island through local 287(g) agreements since the start of the Trump administration, a small portion of the approximately 2,800 ICE arrests on Long Island in that time, according to data from the Deportation Data Project. 

Outside of Nassau County, THE CITY found three examples in which Port Chester police were alleged to have tipped off ICE.

In two cases, men had spent the night in jail for traffic violations; as they were released the next morning, ICE was waiting for them outside the precinct. 

In a third case, police told ICE in advance they were going to arrest a man who had been arraigned in Greenburgh on grand larceny charges several weeks earlier, according to ICE’s own account of the arrest, which was submitted in court. It’s not clear why Port Chester police re-arrested the man, but once he was in their custody, they called ICE, who came and picked him up at the precinct. 

A spokesperson for the Port Chester Police Department didn’t return requests for comment on the incidents. 

Additional reporting by Rosalind Adams.

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Trump administration officials took a victory lap Tuesday in Brooklyn to celebrate a natural gas pipeline that would serve customers in New York City and Long Island. But Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose environmental agency greenlit a key permit for the pipeline after three previous rejections, was a no-show at the event.

The Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) natural gas pipeline, developed by the Oklahoma-based Williams Companies, would run from Pennsylvania to just off the coast of the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, with about 17 miles buried in New York waters. The pipeline, which could be in service by the end of 2027, would connect to a larger network that begins in Texas.

“Building NESE Pipeline, delivering natural gas right here to Floyd Bennett Field, is a pure, momentous, gigantic win for New York and for America,” said the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and former candidate for governor Lee Zeldin. “The capacity of being able to deliver natural gas to up to 2.3 million more families is something for all of us to be able to celebrate.”

Zeldin was joined by Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Secretary of the Department of Energy Chris Wright. (Also in attendance was Hochul’s current Republican challenger in the gubernatorial election, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman.)

Though Hochul was invited to the event, she spent Tuesday in Troy, touring a new housing project, and at Syracuse University for the unveiling of former President Joe Biden’s official portrait. A spokesperson for Hochul declined to comment, instead referring to a statement she released when the state Department of Environmental Conservation granted the pipeline’s permit.

The pipeline received a water quality permit from New York in November, after the state had denied the permit for the same project three times before — in 2018, 2019 and 2020 — all when Andrew Cuomo was governor.

Though the project appeared dead in the water, it was revived as part of a deal Hochul reportedly struck with the Trump administration in order to save the Empire Wind 1 offshore wind project, which the federal government had sought to shut down mid-construction. (Hochul had denied there was a deal, only that she was open to new projects.)

President Donald Trump has consistently backed more oil and gas projects and worked to impede renewable energy development, including offshore wind. New York had been counting on developing offshore wind projects to meet its energy needs without carbon emissions, but has been stymied by Trump’s policies and broader economic forces.

Hochul has embraced relying on fossil fuels for longer than what the state’s climate law has called for, given the federal government’s hostility to renewables and the necessity of meeting demand for energy. (She’s also attempting to change the state’s climate law itself as Albany negotiates the budget.)

“We are facing war against clean energy from Washington Republicans,” she said in a statement released when her Department of Environmental Conservation granted the pipeline’s permit. She said DEC “reviewed impartially” the project application.

On Tuesday, the Washington Republicans who appeared at the “ceremonial groundbreaking” event seemed to be in alignment with Hochul about why the pipeline — which was also opposed by several environmental groups and elected officials — was important.

Zeldin, a former elected official from Long Island who in 2022 unsuccessfully challenged Hochul for governor, said the pipeline was “extra personal” for him, as he “saw firsthand the need for increased natural gas supplies to downstate New York.”

He spoke of New Yorkers that left the state because of affordability concerns — a point Hochul has raised in the context of the climate law — and pointed to the pipeline as evidence that “maybe we can turn the tide.”

Burgum and Wright extolled the economic and potential cost-savings benefits of the pipeline (although National Grid customers will be on the hook for the pipeline’s costs).

Wright thanked “the many local politicians here in New York State and New York City who fought to better energize the citizens of New York, of Long Island and of broader New York State.”

“We’re gonna add to this. NESE is an awesome, absolutely awesome, step forward,” Wright added. “The energy subtraction, fear-mongering policies of the Biden administration are over.”

Alex Schott, spokesperson for the Williams Companies, wrote in an email, “We’re grateful for Gov. Hochul’s ongoing support for the NESE project, and we’re excited to be back to building in New York.”

Outside the event, about a dozen protestors associated with the Stop the Williams NESE Pipeline Coalition held signs and chanted, “No dirty pipelines! Renewable jobs!”

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Nearly half a million people in New York State are poised to lose health insurance coverage as funding cuts from the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” begin to take effect.

On April 1, the state’s Department of Health began sending out notices to New Yorkers who receive coverage on the low-cost Essential Plan about how changes in eligibility requirements will take away their health care coverage. 

The shift will affect hundreds of thousands of working, low-income New Yorkers who don’t qualify for Medicaid. Are you among them?

Here’s what we know about how the funding cuts will affect coverage, what people can do to stay insured, how to access care without insurance and the battle playing out in Albany to cover the costs:

Why is this happening and who is affected?

President Donald Trump signed a massive tax and spending bill in July 2025, including cuts to federal funding for New York’s Essential Plan. About 450,000 people will no longer be eligible for the program beginning July 1, even after New York State got approval from the federal government to keep about 1.3 million people enrolled.

The cuts primarily affect people with incomes from  200% to 250% of the federal poverty line, which this year equals yearly earnings of approximately $32,000 and $40,000 for an individual, or $54,000 to $68,000 for a family of three, according to Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives for the Community Service Society (CSS). 

“These are not wealthy people,” Benjamin said. “It will be much more expensive. They’re going to lose their free, no-deductible coverage, and instead have to pay hundreds of dollars [per month], potentially, for a product with a deductible.” 

With the state budget not yet finalized, advocates and officials are pushing Gov. Kathy Hochul to find the money to prevent so many people from losing health coverage. (More on that below.)

The cuts will also impact legal immigrants in New York on the Essential Plan by eliminating their premium tax credit eligibility entirely, Michael Kinnucan, health policy director at the Fiscal Policy Institute, said in an interview with Healthbeat.

What should I do if I’m losing health care?

If you are set to lose health care through the Essential Plan on July 1, use the next three months to seek care, Rebecca Wallach, director of New York Legal Assistance Group’s legal resources program, told THE CITY.

“Make an appointment to see a primary care doctor, get prescriptions in order, get whatever you need,” she said. 

Pay attention to notices from the New York State of Health Marketplace, whether online or by mail, informing people of when they will lose health care and how they can purchase a new plan on the private market. 

On May 16, you can begin shopping for Qualified Health Plans on the Marketplace, which can connect you with health care navigators trained to assist in the enrollment process. You have until August 30 to pick a new insurance plan, said Danielle Holahan, executive director of the New York State of Health.  Remember, however, that you will lose insurance coverage on July 1 no matter what, so if you’re still choosing a plan after July 1 and before August 30, you’ll be uninsured during that time.

Call the Marketplace’s Customer Service Center at (855) 355-5777 with any questions. It is open weekdays 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., and Saturdays 9 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. For help in languages other than English and Spanish, call and request an interpreter. 

“We will do what we can to smooth this transition,” said Holahan. “We will work with them to let them know what timeline this is all happening on, when they can come in and pick a plan that would take effect on July 1.” 

The experts THE CITY spoke to all said it is critical to meet with health care navigators — trained individuals whose job it is to help people through the byzantine process of getting insured. Mid-May and June are the time to start reaching out, according to Wallach. 

This is especially important if your life or home circumstances have changed since the last time you signed up for insurance, like if you are pregnant, have welcomed a new baby into your household or your income has gone down. These navigators will assist you according to your individual needs.

“It’s really important to have to redo your financial eligibility,” Benjamin said. “If your income this year isn’t as high as last year, you might still be able to get the free coverage.” 

The Community Service Society partners with New York State to connect people with trained navigators. It has 17 community-based organizations who will assist you for free as part of its Navigator Network, which can be found here. 

Rehan Mehmood is the director for health services and a health care navigator at the South Asian Council for Social Services, one of the organizations in the Navigator Network with an office in Flushing, Queens. He said appointments are not necessary — just walk in, and they will help you.

“Our people will make sure you have access to health care,” Mehmood said. “We speak over 20 different languages. We can assist individuals going through plans, seeing what services are covered and helping them get the care they need.” 

Holahan recommends that people not put off choosing a new plan.

“They can always make a change later, but I would encourage people to take action so there’s no gap in coverage,” she said. 

If you speak to a navigator and are not eligible for insurance through the New York State of Health, the state’s health marketplace, but have a medical condition that affects your daily activities, Wallach advises reaching out to the Facilitated Enrollment for the Aged, Blind and Disabled (FE-ABD) — an application assistance program for public health insurance. 

Those who could consider FE-ABD include New Yorkers with active cancer treatment, who receive dialysis or have multiple sclerosis, Wallach said.

“For an individual who is not able to get insurance through those systems in New York State of Health, FE-ABD can evaluate and screen a person for the possibility of Medicaid,” she said.

The Community Service Society’s network list of community-based organizations in the FE-ABD Program can be found here. The Department of Health also has a list of facilitated enrollers for FE-ABD, which can be found here. 

What if I become uninsured, or cannot afford the insurance I am eligible for? 

If you have exhausted your options to access an insurance plan you can afford, the city has a safety net program administered through NYC Health + Hospitals for getting the care you need: NYC Care. 

“It is one of the major avenues where we can make sure clients are connected to comprehensive health care,” Mehmood said.

Anyone within the five boroughs who is uninsured or cannot afford the insurance for which they are eligible can access NYC Care. 

NYC Health + Hospitals administers the program and provides free or low-cost services at the facilities listed here. The enrollment process is outlined here, or you can call (646) 692-2273 for information on how to become a NYC Care member. 

These services are available regardless of immigration status, and health care professionals will not record your immigration status, according to the NYC Health + Hospitals website.

There are also free health clinics funded through grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where people can seek ongoing care. Enter your location here to find one. 

And if you have a medical emergency, do not put off care. “Go to the emergency room,” Wallach said. “That is still true.” 

What about accessing the medicine I need while uninsured, or struggling to afford medication? 

You can access medication as a NYC Care member, but Wallach said there are other ways to afford many of the medications you need on an ongoing basis. 

Seek prescription drug discount programs, like GoodRx that compare prescription drug prices and tell you what pharmacies take specific insurance. NPR also has a good guide on how to get the best price for your prescription when navigating drug discount options.

Can the state make up the Essential Plan funding that the federal government cut? 

Gov. Kathy Hochul maintains that the state cannot take on the costs of the cuts to provide coverage for people who will lose their health insurance. 

“From the beginning, I sounded the alarm about the devastating impact H.R. 1 would have on our hospitals and health care system, and made clear that no state can fully backfill cuts this severe,” she said in an April 1 statement. 

But Benjamin from the Community Service Society said with the state budget yet to be finalized this spring, “it’s not over yet.” 

“It can be done for just under a billion dollars. The money’s there,” she said; the entire state budget is about $260 billion. “Get ahold of your state elected officials and the governor to say we don’t have to lose our coverage.” 

State Sen. Gustavo Rivera and Assemblymember Amy Paulin introduced legislation last week that would protect half a million people from losing coverage through state funding. The bill currently has 10 co-sponsors in the Senate.

“We can absolutely cover folks,” Rivera told THE CITY. “You would have 450,000 New Yorkers who without any action would lose their coverage come July.” 

“That’s going to happen regardless,” he said. “Since it’s happening during this budget year that we’re negotiating right now, we have to do something.”

Holahan from the Department of Health echoed the governor’s sentiment. “The governor has been pretty clear, states cannot backfill cuts of this magnitude,” she said. “It’s not something that we wanted to do, but the federal government had different ideas.”

Wallach noted that “We do not know where the budget is going to fall, so the advice could change.”

But Mehmood said that currently, Essential Plan enrollees who make up to 250% of the federal poverty line will lose coverage. 

“Legislators are still pushing,” he said. “But as of now, what we know is that July 1 is the last day.”

Tell us your story.

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New York City is losing jobs, making life more difficult for Mayor Zohran Mamdani as he seeks to close a big budget deficit while emphasizing economic justice rather than growth.

The city lost 20,000 jobs in 2025 to end the year with employment of 4.823 million, according to revised job numbers released Thursday by the state labor agency. Economists for the city, as well as the state and city comptrollers, had expected an increase of about 40,000.

The biggest change came in health care jobs, which had been the one area of expansion, with the number of home health care workers revised down by 46,000.

The bad news comes as the city grapples with a series of new economic problems: 

• Unemployment among college graduates in their 20s has been rising sharply in the last year. 
• The once thriving film and tv production industry is in a major contraction. 
• And Wall Street, whose soaring profits and bonuses have boosted tax collections, is being whipsawed by the war in Iran.

Some economists lay the blame on President Donald Trump.

“It is no surprise to see that Trump policy has been taking a toll on the economy, including in New York City. Tariffs, policy volatility and uncertainty, the dismembering of the social safety net, and the expansion of multiple deadly wars around the world are not good policy anywhere, including here,” said Emily Eisner, an economist and acting director of the Fiscal Policy Institute.

Monthly data on jobs comes from a survey of employers by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Each year the state department of labor updates the numbers by using data on unemployment insurance taxes paid by employers, which is more accurate but not as timely. This year’s revision was delayed several weeks by the federal government shutdown. (The numbers in this story are based on a comparison of December 2025 to December 2024).

The new numbers on home health care employment, almost entirely paid for by the state Medicaid program, may be the most significant development, as it accounted for as much as two-thirds of all new jobs in the last two years. The Hochul administration’s efforts to curtail its soaring cost appear to be working, which is good for the state budget — but bad for the city’s economy.

For the first time, the jobless rate among young college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27, which has risen to 6.5%, is almost the same as for young New Yorkers between 22 and 27 without a degree, according to a report issued last month by the city comptroller.

The reversal is dramatic. In late 2020, amid the pandemic, just over 25% of young New Yorkers without a degree were jobless, while only 10% of those with a bachelor’s or advanced degree were looking for work.

Ads for entry level jobs have fallen by a third since 2019, according to a recent report from the Center for an Urban Future. Even internships are harder to come by, plunging 37%, it found.

In a so-called low-hire, low-fire economy, there are simply fewer opportunities for new entrants in the workforce, notes Janelle Jones, a senior economist at the progressive Groundwork Collaborative.

Whether companies are not hiring because they expect artificial intelligence to replace workers is harder to figure out, she adds, a view echoed by the comptroller’s report.

“New York City’s youth unemployment rate, especially for college graduates, is an alarming trend,” said City Comptroller Mark Levine. “Whether it is the high cost of living or the impact of AI, everyone in government should be focused on how we help young people entering the workforce.”

Film and TV productions struggle

At the same time, the city’s once thriving film and TV production business has contracted by about 20% dramatically despite an annual $800 million in state tax credits, amid consolidation and a sharp reduction in the number of shows and films being produced.

New York isn’t alone in suffering. The job decline in Los Angeles is 30% as the number of live scripted films and tv shows with budgets exceeding $40 million produced in the United States has declined from 251 in 2021 to 159 last year.

More bad news appears on the horizon for New York. It was reported last week that Deutsche Bank filed a foreclosure lawsuit against the Hackman Capital, owner of the iconic Kaufman Astoria Studios, for failure to pay back a loan in a clear sign of financial distress. Hackman also owns Silvercup Studios, another crucial soundstage in Long Island City.

Despite the restructuring of the industry, the Adams administration’s Economic Development Corp. continued to support the expansion of studio space, with another stage on Pier 94 opening in January. 

Wall Street slumps

What happens on Wall Street will be crucial for the city’s economy, and especially the budgets being adopted by the state and city this spring. 

Record profits and bonuses last year bolstered income tax collections for both the state and city and the jobs revisions boosted employment to a record level. Both the governor and mayor are taking advantage of this by increasing their revenue expectations for the next budgets. 

But the stock market is down 6% for the year, and if the war with Iran continues, it could endanger plans for the biggest initial public stock offerings in history this year from AI companies and SpaceX. IPOs generate huge profits for Wall Street firms.

Mamdani’s focus: Economic justice

Meanwhile, the Mamdani administration has yet to outline a plan for the economy. For the first time in anyone’s memory, the city does not have a deputy mayor for economic development. Instead, Julie Su is the deputy mayor for economic justice. It has yet to name a new head of the Economic Development Corp., historically the agency most responsible for finding ways to grow the economy.

The Mamdani administration did not reply to a request for comment.

The new jobs data will be front and center as Albany and City Hall adopt their next budgets and decide between offsetting federal aid cuts and increasing taxes, with the governor opposed to tax increases and the mayor pushing an increase on the wealthy and large corporations.

Progressives say it is imperative to find ways to offset the impact of federal aid cuts. This week, 450,000 New Yorkers were notified they would lose their health coverage in July because of changes to one of the state’s most important health care options.

“Now we have clearer evidence that the Trump administration’s actions have had a destructive and negative impact on people’s ability to find work and earn a living to support their families in the U.S. and New York City is not immune from this,” said Lauren Melodia, who tracks the city’s economy at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs. 

“This is primarily a problem that requires federal action, and New York policymakers, firms and workers are in a particular bind as the decline in jobs in the city leads to greater poverty and need for a social safety net that the federal government is also actually shredding.”

But those opposed to tax increases say the new data is not a reason not to change course.

“The loss of jobs reinforces what we’ve been saying: that the economy is fragile and the risks are mounting in a serious way, from AI disruption to tariffs and now growing tax uncertainty out of City Hall and Albany,” said Steven Fulop, CEO of the big business group, the Partnership for New York City. 

“The city and state can’t control AI or tariffs, but they can control taxes and raising any taxes now would likely cost more jobs and only deepen the affordability crisis,” he said.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested 811 immigrants in New York City since August who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of these “collateral” arrests — as the agency calls them — 85% involved people with no criminal history, according to newly obtained ICE data. 

THE CITY had reported on several examples of those arrests, including that of a 28-year-old construction worker on the streets of Corona, Queens while he was headed to work one morning. Agents claimed they had been looking for his neighbor, but they took him instead. 

Overall, these “collateral” arrests accounted for 24% of all ICE arrests in New York City from August 2025 through March 10.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has repeatedly said in the past that it’s focused on arresting “the worst of the worst” while regularly posting photos of immigrants convicted of crimes that ICE has arrested.

Yet even of the 2,491 people ICE targeted for arrest in New York City since August, 73% had no criminal convictions or pending charges.

The ICE arrest data analyzed by THE CITY was obtained by the Deportation Data Project through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and covers immigration arrests through March 10. It includes, for the first time, ICE’s own determination of whether a person was detained as part of a “targeted” operation or as a “collateral” arrest. 

While the ICE data does not materially describe where or how a person was arrested, THE CITY found many of these “targeted” arrests took place at ICE check-ins and immigration court, where agents have been carrying a list of names and staking out hearings to detain immigrants since last year.

Asked about the latest ICE arrest data, an unnamed spokesperson disputed the agency’s own records. 

“This story only reveals how the media manipulates data to peddle a false narrative that DHS is not targeting the worst of the worst,” the spokesperson said, pointing to several examples on DHS’s website of people arrested who were wanted for crimes in other countries. 

“Nationwide, our law enforcement is targeting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens — including murderers, rapists, gang members, pedophiles, and terrorists,” adding that “70% of illegal aliens ICE arrested across the country have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.” 

ICE’s own data released by the Deportation Data Project, however, shows those people accounted for 59% of arrests nationwide since August, according to THE CITY’s analysis. 

In New York City, that percentage was even lower: Just 24% of the 3,191 people ICE arrested had criminal convictions or pending charges, while 76% had no criminal history. 

“This statistic doesn’t account for those wanted for violent crimes in their home country or another country, INTERPOL notices, human rights abusers, gang members, terrorists, etc. The list goes on,” the spokesperson said. 

Advocates slammed the latest figures, saying it was another indication of a law enforcement agency needing to be reigned in. 

“The Trump administration is not interested in actually delivering on what they say, which is making our communities more safer and secure,” said Murad Awawdeh, the president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition. “They are aimlessly, racially profiling people, but they’re looking for anyone that they can detain so they can meet their idiotic quotas.”

Border Czar Tom Homan has long reasoned that sanctuary cities like New York would face more of these “collateral arrests” because ICE isn’t allowed to go into local jails or coordinate with local police for the purposes of immigration enforcement.

“When you release a public safety threat out of a sanctuary jail and they won’t give us access to him, that means we got to go to the neighborhood and find him, and we will find him, but when we find him, he may be with others,” Homan said shortly after Donald Trump took office in 2025. “Others that don’t have a criminal conviction and are in the country illegally, they will be arrested too.”

But ICE’s own data shows a more complicated picture. 

The agency’s data suggests a higher rate of “collateral” arrests outside of jails and prisons in the Hudson Valley and on Long Island, where sanctuary laws are generally less protective towards immigrants or do not exist at all, and where local police often assist ICE. 

The collateral arrest rates for the region’s specific jurisdictions, however, can only be approximated because ICE did not reveal in its data the specific counties where it processed 1,719 arrests downstate since August.

Overall, ICE classified roughly 36% of immigration arrests outside jails and prisons in Long Island and along the Hudson Valley up to Ulster County since August as “collateral”, compared to roughly 25% of such arrests in New York City. 

Immigrant advocates have been pushing state lawmakers to pass a bill called New York for All, which would extend sanctuary protections like those in New York City to the rest of the state, limit cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE agents. 

“You would think that the bare minimum that our state could do is pass the New York for All act that would prohibit the collusion of local law enforcement, which is also racially profiling people for the purpose of handing them over to ICE around the state,” Yasmine Farhang, the Director of the Immigrant Defense Project. 

The latest data indicates ICE’s arrest surge last summer — when masked agents were grabbing people at immigration courts and staking out check-in offices — remains the peak of the agency’s enforcement efforts thus far in the five boroughs. 

Arrests slowed for a period of time following a federal court order last August limiting the number of people ICE could detain at once inside 26 Federal Plaza holding cells — before picking up again between October and December, when THE CITY reported on an apparent increase in arrests on the street. 

ICE arrests then declined in New York City in the weeks after DHS agents surged into Minneapolis in December in an effort dubbed “Operation Metro Surge”, where they later killed two protesters in January — Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Collateral arrests, in particular, have dropped dramatically since Pretti’s killing in late January, with just a few a week, compared to dozens of each week logged in the fall.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Customs and Border Patrol Commander at Large Greg Bovino were both ousted in the aftermath of that politically unpopular operation. Honan was given a more prominent role as Trump confided to members of his inner circle that the mass deportation efforts may have gone too far, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

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This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

Dylan Lopez Contreras sat waiting for a copy of his class schedule in a sunny fourth-floor room of his Bronx high school as his counselor walked in, wearing a “Free Dylan” button attached to the strap of his messenger bag.

Dylan stood, and Hedin Bernard lifted Dylan’s more-than-6-foot frame off the floor in a tight bear hug.

It had been more than 10 months since Dylan set foot in ELLIS Preparatory Academy, a high school geared toward older, newly arrived immigrant students. The last time the two had seen each other, Dylan’s hair was dyed purple and just covered his ears. Now, it fell below the 21-year-old’s shoulders and the purple dye had faded to yellow.

Last May, federal immigration officials arrested Dylan in a Manhattan courthouse after his asylum hearing, making him the first known New York City public school student detained during President Donald Trump’s second term. The Venezuelan native became the public face of an aggressive new phase of the government’s mass deportation campaign, remaining in custody until his release last week.

After Dylan’s arrest, his mom Raiza’s first call was to Bernard. Ever since then, Bernard has, along with ELLIS founding Principal Norma Vega, led the school’s efforts to rally behind Dylan — which included helping to put Raiza in touch with lawyers and advocates, organizing a student letter-writing campaign, and supporting a fundraiser for the family. With Dylan’s return to ELLIS, they hope he can focus on “what will happen, not what did happen,” Vega said.

But the jubilation of Dylan’s return has been mixed with frequent reminders of the looming threat of immigration enforcement facing him and other ELLIS students.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, released Dylan while he awaits a decision on an appeal in his asylum case. An immigration judge rejected his claim last year, and the appeals process could take years, according to his lawyers from the New York Legal Assistance Group. But ICE has the ability to take him back into custody at any time and requires regular check-ins, his lawyers said.

Shortly after Bernard reunited with Dylan Tuesday morning, as Dylan scarfed down a donut and drank coffee poured from Bernard’s thermos, the counselor invited him to join a college trip that week.

ELLIS staffers believe that preparing immigrant students for college is the surest path out of poverty. The trip would visit three colleges in upstate New York.

Dylan glanced down at his leg, where a black ankle monitor had been attached as a condition of his release. With his travel restrictions, Dylan knew he likely couldn’t attend.

But that didn’t slow down the ELLIS staffers for long. Later that morning, Bernard asked a colleague to invite college representatives to ELLIS, so Dylan wouldn’t have to leave school to meet them.

Detention Still Lingers

The swiftness of the changes over the past two weeks has been hard for Dylan to comprehend.

After months in Moshannon Valley Processing Center, a Western Pennsylvania detention facility, Dylan had stood at a crowded press conference, flanked by Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, thanking his supporters in Spanish from under the blue brim of a New York Knicks hat.

He had been sleeping on a paper thin cot in a cell with more than 70 men. Now he was in his own bed, cuddled with his younger siblings, ages 8 and 10, who had asked to sleep next to him. And after losing about 30 pounds in detention because he often couldn’t stomach the food, Dylan had a phalanx of adults at ELLIS showering him with food, free school supplies, and affection.

“It’s a big contrast, to go through so much mistreatment, and then come back to people who love and support you,” he said in Spanish.

Still, his thoughts drift back to a friend in detention nicknamed “El Mayor,” or the elder, who has already called Dylan to let him know how happy he was to hear about his release and to ask if he could use his public profile to advocate for the release of others. (Dylan did exactly that at his press conference.) As long as those men remain in detention, Moshannon Valley is “not going to feel very far away,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to questions about the conditions in Moshannon.

ELLIS staffers said reintegrating Dylan into school will mean helping him catch up on all he missed over the past 10 months, while also processing the ongoing trauma of his detention.

While Dylan was incarcerated, his classmates had gone to Washington, D.C., prepared for or taken Regents exams they needed for graduation, and kept up with the guitar lessons Dylan enjoyed before his arrest.

Letters from his classmates helped sustain him as his detention stretched from days to months, and his optimism for a quick release faded. He watched new detainees — including grandparents and young kids — come and go while he remained locked up.

Dylan had no formal education in detention. But he was determined to do what he could to keep up with his English.

He practiced speaking with cellmates from places like China and the United Kingdom and to advocate for better treatment from the guards.

He devoured Manga and Marvel comics donated by the advocacy group ROCC NYC, which played a critical role in supporting his family and keeping public attention on his case. He scoured an English dictionary from the facility’s library to learn new vocabulary but had no one to check his pronunciation. And he tried to read some classics, such as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez.

When he returned to ELLIS last week, Vega stopped him in the hallway to hand him a gift from a staffer in her district office: a copy of Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” another classic Dylan had asked to read but couldn’t get a copy of.

Dylan, who had fled Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro’s repressive regime, had been kidnapped by a Mexican cartel on his journey to the U.S., and spent 10 months in ICE custody, had said he wanted to understand Dante’s nine circles of hell.

ELLIS Gears Up

Staffers at ELLIS are accustomed to helping students navigate all kinds of trauma, but they’d never had a student return from long-term incarceration, Bernard said.

Dylan’s counselors at ELLIS plan to refer him to a Spanish-speaking therapist through a mental health clinic located on the first floor of ELLIS’ building, Bernard said. And staffers will watch for any signs that he is struggling.

They’re also hoping to give Dylan chances to enjoy himself outside academic courses, though his ankle monitor is complicating those plans. His counselor enrolled Dylan in a swim class, but Dylan worried about getting the device wet.

Schools in New York are required to continue enrolling students through age 21 — but state law doesn’t stop them from staying longer if the school agrees, Vega said.

ELLIS staffers don’t want to keep Dylan in high school longer than necessary, but are encouraging him to stay for two years so he can master English before applying to college.

In the meantime, he is eager to earn money to help his mom and siblings with rent. He hopes to take a bartending course so he can work at night without interfering with his school schedule.

Dylan worked long hours as a delivery driver before his arrest, and Bernard remains concerned about how long he’ll want to stay in school.

Staffers at ELLIS are working on finding him an internship that allows him to make money while learning new skills and burnishing his college resume.

Dylan said he’s willing to stay at ELLIS “as long as it takes.”

An Uncertain Future

Dylan’s arrest, and the aggressive escalation in immigration enforcement it represented, cast a long shadow over ELLIS over the past 10 months, reaching into every aspect of its work.

Students had begun to talk more openly about self-deportation. Pressure to abandon school for work grew as students confronted their diminished prospects for building a future in the U.S. And ELLIS’ enrollment, like that at immigrant-heavy schools across the city, has declined as border crossings slowed to a trickle.

Many of the ELLIS students who greeted Dylan Tuesday with tearful hugs and exclamations like “bienvenidos, loco!” (welcome back, crazy!) had endured their own brushes with immigration enforcement.

Dylan saw a friend whose mother was deported while he was in detention, leaving her without a way to pay rent or look after her toddler during school hours. Dylan’s friend Bridget is considering returning to Ecuador in part because of the fear of ICE. Another student saw Dylan’s ankle monitor and asked a staff member what the device did, adding that her dad had one too, Bernard said.

And when Dylan greeted two fellow Venezuelan students, one asked if he’d had to sleep on the floor — noting that’s where he’d slept after being detained while crossing the border. “I know the floor,” Dylan responded with a wry smile.

During lunch time, Dylan settled into a booth with friends and munched on mozzarella sticks. He had a newfound appreciation for school cafeteria food.

His friendships were what Dylan missed most about ELLIS, and there was lots to catch up on. The conversation soon turned to an ordinary high school concern: Dylan had to figure out what color to dye his hair next.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

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The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration has brought population growth in New York City to a screeching halt.

The city’s population in July 2025 was 8.58 million, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday, down about 12,200 from July 2024 and significantly less than the 8.8 million New Yorkers counted in April 2020.

International arrivals in the 12 months before July 2025 plunged to only 66,000, the lowest number since the pandemic and far less than the 220,000 immigrants who arrived over that same period in 2023-24.

About 114,000 left the city for other locations in the United States in the year ending last July, about the same pace that has existed since the pandemic. For decades, international migration has more than offset the number of New Yorkers leaving for elsewhere in the country.

“Today, New York has a big and robust economy, so a single year of downturn is not going to knock it off its balance,” said David Kallick, an economist specializing in immigration issues at the Immigration Research Institute. 

“But if we see a sustained drop in the number of people coming in — and that’s very much a story of immigration — then the city will shrink. New York saw in the 1970s how dire the results of population decline can be.” 

The numbers released Thursday are estimates derived from examining births, deaths and migration data. The Census also revised its estimates for previous years, which put the July 2020 population at 8.75 million, followed by a decline of about 400,000 during the pandemic and a rebound of about 220,000 since 2022.

The city continued to have a natural increase in population as births outpace deaths. Some upstate counties with older populations see deaths outpace births, meaning a decline in immigration contributes to an even steeper population decline, said Jan Vink of the program on applied demographics at Cornell University.

The Census Bureau did not include any estimates of those deported under Trump policies or those who left for other countries voluntarily. Data released by ICE and analyzed by THE CITY puts the number of deportations in the first six months of the year at fewer than 2,000.

Kallick notes that the period covers only the first six months of the Trump administration, when its crackdown on immigration was just ramping up.

Other cities also dependent on immigration like Los Angeles, Miami and San Diego saw more significant declines in population.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be forced to defend its detention practices inside holding cells at 26 Federal Plaza in a trial slated for the end of May. 

Immigrant advocates from Make the Road New York and attorneys from the law firm Wang Hecker and the NYCLU have argued that migrants were held there in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions and denied access to lawyers. 

Their detention violated First Amendment rights because they couldn’t speak to lawyers, and Fifth Amendment rights because they were subject to “punitive conditions of confinement” without due process, the suit alleges. 

The trial, before federal judge Lewis Kaplan, will kick off on May 26.

The groups filed a class action lawsuit last August, as ICE arrests in New York were surging, on behalf of anyone who was or will be detained inside 26 Federal Plaza.

At the time, ICE was cramming people arrested in and around New York City inside the holding cells on the 10th floor in dire conditions, with limited access to food and water, according to detainees and corroborated by video evidence obtained by THE CITY. 

As part of the lawsuit, advocates submitted first-hand accounts of immigrants detained there, including a 20-year-old who spent days covered in menstrual blood because agents had given a room full of women just two menstrual pads. In another case, one detainee said a guard forced men to line up for water while they squirted drops in their mouths.

The video obtained by THE CITY showed the men cramped together laying down on the floor, within view of a toilet. 

At the time, THE CITY also conducted an analysis of ICE’s own data, finding the average time people were spending inside holding cells has surged up to more than four days, though the cells, which have no beds, were intended to hold people for less than 12 hours. On one night in early June, ICE kept as many as 186 people overnight, THE CITY found. 

Judge Lewis Kaplan stepped in swiftly last summer, putting a temporary restraining order and then a preliminary injunction, that dramatically restricted capacity on how many people ICE could hold at once inside its holding cells and required ICE to provide food, water, sanitary products and access to legal counsel. 

In the months since, immigrant advocates and Trump administration attorneys have gone back and forth in discovery, deposing top-ranking ICE officials and seeking records on immigrant detainees. 

THE CITY recently reported that during one such deposition, William Joyce, ICE’s New York Deputy Field Office Director, had admitted it was holding detainees on a previously undisclosed 9th floor. 

On that floor the agency hadn’t been abiding by all the rules set out in Judge Kaplan’s preliminary injunction, a government attorney admitted. 
Both parties subsequently signed an agreement that ICE would apply Kaplan’s ruling to any, “any room, cell, or other space where individuals are detained for any length of time by Defendants at 26 Federal Plaza.”

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