NEW YORK — New York City's top immigration enforcement official has a direct message for the politicians who want to wipe his agency off the map: change the law, don't demonize the agents who enforce it.
Kenneth Genalo, who leads ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) in New York City, delivered that challenge in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, according to the network. His remarks came during a ride-along with ICE agents in Brooklyn, where officers arrested two men — one facing a pending felony sexual abuse charge, and another who had served seven years in prison for assault, Fox News Digital reported.
"If you don't like the job we're doing and the priorities and the people that we're targeting, change the law," Genalo said. "Congressional people, senators, representatives. Change the law, don't demonize ICE for doing the job that you empowered us to do."
The interview landed the same week that New York's political class has escalated its campaign against the agency. In July, 143 New York elected officials — including 31 of the city's 51 Council members — signed a letter urging congressional Democrats to defund and dismantle ICE, according to Fox News Digital. The signatories claimed the agency is beyond reform and cited the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis as evidence of what they called a disregard for public safety. Those circumstances have not been independently established here, and the letter's characterization is the signatories' own.
Among those who signed was newly elected New York Democrat Claire Valdez, who made abolishing ICE part of her congressional platform. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have separately called for dismantling the agency, per the same reporting.
Genalo's pushback also took aim at sanctuary laws that he said force agents off the relative safety of coordinated operations and into street arrests — a point he made on WABC Radio, where he discussed ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations. The station's Instagram post promoting the appearance does not include a transcript; it identifies Genalo and the ERO unit but carries no verifiable quotes from the segment.
What Genalo is describing is not abstract. In Brooklyn, agents arrested a man already facing a felony sexual abuse charge and another who had spent seven years behind bars for assault — arrests that, in a jurisdiction cooperating with federal immigration authorities, might have happened in a jail rather than on a sidewalk. Sanctuary policies restrict local law enforcement from honoring ICE detainers, which means agents go looking for subjects in the community instead.
Genalo also questioned why activists would interfere with arrests without knowing the criminal histories of the people being taken into custody, Fox News Digital reported.
The abolition push may run into a wall inside the Democrats' own caucus. RedState reported that Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas — the ranking member and likely next chairman of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee — told Fox News Digital he does not support defunding ICE. "I don't believe in defunding ICE and I think the majority of the Democrats do not believe defunding ICE, but there are serious rail guards we need put on ICE," Cuellar said, according to RedState. Cuellar is a past vote for a DHS funding bill that included billions for ICE.
The numbers tell the story of the stakes. The July letter was signed by a majority of the New York City Council, not a fringe. It asks congressional Democrats to strip funding from the agency that carries out interior immigration enforcement — the same agency whose officers, per Fox News Digital's reporting, are making arrests in Brooklyn of men with pending sex-abuse charges and prior assault convictions. If the letter's signers get their way, those arrests don't happen, or they come from a smaller, defunded agency with fewer agents on the street.
It is not yet known whether House or Senate Democrats will move on the defunding demand, or how Cuellar's position as a likely appropriations chairman would shape any such effort. What is known is that the men and women Genalo oversees are executing laws passed by Congress — and that the politicians demanding their abolition have the power to change those laws any time they choose.
Our Take
Genalo said the quiet part out loud, and it's the part the Left cannot answer: if you want different immigration enforcement, write a different law. Mamdani, AOC and the 143 officials who signed that letter don't want to do the work of legislating — they want to burn down the agency and call it virtue.
Look at who gets hurt. A Brooklyn arrest of a man facing a felony sexual abuse charge isn't a poster for cruelty — it's the system working. Sanctuary policies force agents into street confrontations that could have been handled at Rikers with a phone call. Every politician who votes for sanctuary rules and then attacks ICE for street arrests is attacking the consequence of their own policy.
And note the stumble inside their own ranks. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from a border district, said flat out he doesn't believe in defunding ICE — and he's in line to chair the very subcommittee that funds it. That is the actual math of this fight. The abolish-ICE caucus is loud on X and weak on appropriations.
Patriots, here's what you can do: ask your member of Congress where they stand on defunding ICE — and make them answer on the record before November. If they want to change the law, they can write a bill. If they want to dismantle the agency, they can vote for it. What they shouldn't get is to demonize the agents doing the job and then pretend they had nothing to do with the consequences. Genalo's challenge is simple, and it's the right one. Will the Left take it — or keep attacking the badge?
