New job listings reveal how the mayor is staffing the city’s frontline defense against federal immigration enforcement
Wanted: Senior Advisors to Coordinate Against ICE
Three job listings appeared on the New York City government employment portal in early March 2026, and they were unlike most municipal postings. The titles were generic enough: Senior Advisor, Senior Program Advisor, Senior Program Manager. But the organizational home and the job description made clear what these positions are: the staffing of New York City’s frontline institutional defense against federal immigration enforcement.
The Interagency Response Committee
The Interagency Response Committee was created by Mayor Mamdani in his February 6 executive order, formally titled to respond to escalating federal immigration actions. The committee is chaired by First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan. It includes Faiza Ali, the commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, and designated representatives from every city agency and office. The three new hires will report directly to Fuleihan and serve as the operational backbone of a committee that, on paper, spans the entirety of city government. Salaries range from $110,000 to $185,000 per year, compensation levels that signal the city is recruiting experienced policy professionals rather than entry-level staff.
What the Committee Is Designed to Do
According to the executive order as reported by Gothamist, the committee’s mandate is threefold: to plan proactively for potential immigration enforcement surges in New York City, to coordinate city government responses in real time during such surges, and to ensure that city agencies speak with a consistent and legally defensible voice when confronted with federal enforcement actions. The model draws explicitly on what the city observed in Minneapolis, where a federal Operation Metro Surge involving more than 2,000 ICE agents produced widespread civil rights violations, documented instances of racial profiling, and the deaths of two American citizens who were mistakenly targeted. The Trump administration has threatened to bring similar operations to New York City, which has the largest undocumented population of any American city.
The Legal Framework the Team Will Operate In
The committee’s work is bounded by a clear legal framework. Federal courts have consistently upheld the right of state and local governments to decline voluntary cooperation with immigration enforcement under the anti-commandeering doctrine. What city agencies cannot do is actively obstruct valid federal law enforcement actions. The committee’s job is to maintain that line clearly and consistently across dozens of agencies with thousands of employees who may encounter ICE agents in the field. The American Immigration Council has documented that jurisdictions with clear sanctuary policies and well-trained agency staff produce fewer civil rights violations during enforcement surges than those where agency responses are ad hoc and inconsistent.
The Staffing Context
Bitta Mostofi, a special adviser to Fuleihan who previously served in the de Blasio administration’s immigration policy office, was named to the committee at its formation. Ramzi Kassem, the city’s chief counsel, also has a seat. The new hires are expected to provide program management capacity to a committee that, under crisis conditions, would need to coordinate real-time responses across NYPD, DSS, ACS, DOH, and the shelter system simultaneously. That coordination challenge is enormous. The 2017 and 2018 ICE enforcement surge under the first Trump administration revealed significant gaps in how New York City agencies communicated with each other and with immigrant communities during enforcement actions. The new committee structure is designed to close those gaps before the next surge, not scramble to close them during one.
What Advocates Want to See
Immigrant rights organizations have welcomed the executive order and the hiring announcement but have called for additional steps. Make the Road New York, one of the city’s largest immigrant organizing groups, has asked the administration to establish clear protocols for notifying affected communities when ICE operations are detected and to expand the legal aid hotline capacity at the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. The hotline, which is available Monday through Friday and one Saturday per month at 1-800-354-0365, provides free immigration legal referrals. In a city of 500,000 undocumented residents, that hotline capacity is a fraction of potential demand. The New York Immigration Coalition has advocated for a full-time, fully staffed legal response infrastructure as part of the committee’s long-term mandate.
