(Bloomberg) — Zohran Mamdani, the frontrunner in the New York mayor’s race, said the city should brace itself for a deployment of National Guard troops as part of President Donald Trump’s attempt to fight crime and round up undocumented immigrants in Democratic cities.
“We cannot try to convince ourselves that because something is illegal, Donald Trump will not do it,” Mamdani said at a rally with US Senator Bernie Sanders at Brooklyn College on Saturday. “We have to be prepared and we have to be clear-eyed and we have to understand that it will take every single tool at our disposal.”
Sanders, an 83-year-old independent Vermont senator and New York native, has been campaigning with the 33-year-old Democratic Socialist assemblyman over the last few days.
Trump deployed National Guard troops in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, this summer and his border czar, Tom Homan, said on CNN’s State of the Union that troops could be expected in Chicago this week.
The Brooklyn rally was part of Sanders’s “Fighting Oligarchy Tour,” in which he criticizes billionaires.
Mamdani, whose proposals include a rent freeze, government-owned grocery stores and free child care and buses, has vowed to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy to help pay for it.
“It is not going to be Donald Trump, it is not going to be Bill Ackman, it is not going to be DoorDash, we will choose our mayor,” Mamdani said. Mamdani and his allies have criticized the food delivery company, which contributed to Mamdani’s rival Andrew Cuomo, for its employment practices.
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