My Immigrant Parents Worry About ICE Raids and Rent Increases

At the Indian grocery store in Jackson Heights, the shelves overflow with cumin, turmeric, and red chili powder: the same spices my mom carried from India in a plastic bag when she first arrived in 2005. But now fear mixes with those scents of her childhood.

Rumors had been flying that ICE was in the neighborhood, and now masked men in dark clothes were standing outside the grocery store. South Asian mothers around us clasped their toddlers tight. My mother and I sped into the subway, even though she was granted U.S. citizenship last year. That day still haunts me—because it wasn’t paranoia.

ICE arrests of New Yorkers have skyrocketed this year, sweeping up neighbors who have no criminal record. Some were stopped on their way to work; others while dropping their kids at school. And after the Supreme Court ruled that federal agents can detain people based on how they look, speak, or the jobs they hold, even the smallest errands feel charged with risk.

Once we’re safely home, the tension shifts to money. Bills and receipts spread across the kitchen table like a second dinner. My mom punches numbers into her calculator as she pushes the bills around: When the rent rises, everything else tightens. Vacations, new clothes, even filling my migraine prescriptions all start another round of negotiation. My parents trade possibilities like cards, reshuffling until we can make it one more month.

When I was younger, I thought the mayor’s job was to cut ribbons. But during the last mayoral campaign in 2021, when I was 13, I noticed how seriously my parents listened when the candidates talked about housing in the debates. When my dad muttered that no candidate seemed willing to protect tenants from sudden rent hikes or displacement, it clicked: The choice of mayor affects whether families like mine could stay in our homes.

In May of this year, I came across Zohran Mamdani on Instagram. South Asian, young, and speaking with conviction and humbleness, it felt like he belonged in our neighborhood. I watched clips of him in Astoria, read about his organizing for tenants, and discovered a politician who talked about housing, transit, and immigrant rights not as slogans but as urgent realities. I felt an even closer connection when I learned that, like me, he went to a specialized high school and had also been a tutor.

Someone Understands

The first time I went to Mamdani’s campaign website, I felt like someone understood the worries of my family and neighbors. For as long as I can remember, rent has been the shadow hanging over conversations in our apartment. My parents, brother, and I live in a two-bedroom apartment in Forest Hills, Queens. In our neighborhood, the median rent rose by 11.8% in 2024. 

Mamdani’s plan to crack down on predatory landlords speaks directly to the late-night conversations I’ve overheard among my parents, aunts, and uncles about whether we can stay in the neighborhood we call home. Mamdani’s call to “freeze the rent” is another part of his sensible plan to build permanently affordable units and strengthen tenant protections.  

And then there’s education, the reason so many immigrant families start their new lives in Queens. My parents wanted my brother and me to have opportunities they never had in India. But I’ve seen how underfunded schools and overcrowded classrooms make those opportunities feel out of reach. In the high schools in my neighborhood, English Language Learners often wait months for support, and guidance counselors are stretched so thin they can’t help every student plan for college. I’ve watched friends fall behind, not for lack of talent, but because the system moves too slowly or assumes they can navigate it on their own.

Housing and education aren’t separate issues—they collide in painful ways when families lose their homes. Last year, more than 146,000 public-school students in New York City experienced homelessness, about one in eight. Nationally, nearly a third of students were chronically absent, with even higher rates for kids in shelters. Those numbers are staggering, and I’ve seen firsthand my classmates fall behind because they had no stable address. 

Last year, one of my friends shuffled between three shelters as his family struggled to keep up with rising rents. Every few months, he had to transfer schools, carry his books in a plastic bag, and explain again to teachers why he was behind on assignments. By the time he finally found a place to settle, he had missed lessons, lost credits, and grown hesitant to speak up in class. Moving was a barrier to learning, a constant disruption of his education. I think Mamdani’s vision of strengthening schools with mental-health staff, free afterschool programs, and community interventions promises the kind of safety net every student deserves.

Mamdani’s proposal to make New York City buses free resonates with me too. My family and I take buses to see my neurologist for my migraines and to visit family friends. When Mamdani fought for the fare-free bus pilot as an Assembly member, the results were immediate: MTA data showed ridership jumps of about 30% on weekdays and nearly 40% on weekends. And now MTA fares are going up. With one-quarter of New Yorkers living under the poverty line, paying $6 for a round trip can put basic necessities like work, medical appointments, and day care out of reach.

A City of Immigrants

But what makes Mamdani stand apart for me even more than his housing, transit, or education proposals is his stance on immigration, which has become so much more important since January. Nearly 38% of New Yorkers are foreign born, which means immigration policy is city policy. And yet, under the current federal administration, hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying immigrants, including those with green cards, now live in fear of ICE raids and deportations without due process. 

Zohran Mamdani has consistently defended sanctuary protections and fought for immigrant legal support, earning the backing of immigrant-rights groups. He has pledged to allocate an additional $100 million to fund free legal representation for undocumented migrants facing deportation, making it a key part of his “Trump-Proofing NYC” campaign platform. That would give breathing room for my parents and neighbors.

My family and neighbors feel like we’re under surveillance. This mayoral fight is about affordability, but it’s also about whether New York will stand up to Trump’s war on immigrants.

Growing up South Asian in Queens, I rarely saw faces like mine in city leadership. When Mamdani talks about language access, a city that health care workers can afford, or outreach to community centers, I hear a mayor who would make city systems less alienating for kids like me.

His social media mobilizes young people like me, who often get our news online. By livestreaming, posting multilingual updates, and highlighting grassroots voices, he makes politics feel less distant and more participatory. I know that Mamdani’s big ideas come with trade-offs. Freezing rents and building permanently affordable housing will require reliable funding streams and careful design to avoid short-term fixes that collapse under pressure. Expanding transit access and strengthening schools will cost a lot of money. But I would rather our city debate how to fund affordable housing than resign ourselves to mass displacement. I would rather we argue over transit priorities than accept that working-class riders remain priced out.

These debates eventually lead to the question many politicians avoid: how to raise revenue fairly. The truth is that there is a lot of money in New York, but it is concentrated in the hands of a small percentage of residents. A recent report found that while the top three percent of wage earners in New York grow richer, low-wage workers face an even sharper risk of falling into poverty.

Mamdani’s plan to finance the city government would raise the top state corporate tax rate to 11.5 percent, matching New Jersey’s rate, to generate $5 billion a year. He also proposes adding a two percent New York City income tax on anyone making more than $1 million annually, which would bring in another $4 billion. 

Now that Eric Adams has dropped out, next month’s election is essentially a contest between Mamdani and former governor Andrew Cuomo. The contrast seems clear to me. Mamdani’s campaign is fueled by tenant groups, immigrant-rights organizers, and young people like me who see our lives reflected in his policies. His funding tells a similar story: thousands of small-dollar contributions amplified by New York City’s public matching funds program. 

Cuomo’s, by contrast, leans on a handful of large checks from wealthy donors and super PACs, many tied to real estate interests. Trump and his allies have already signaled support for Cuomo, hoping to steer New York away from its current commitments to sanctuary protections and equitable social programs.

I support Mamdani because I want a mayor who will fight for a city where fear—of ICE, of big rent hikes, of missing a doctor’s appointment because we can’t afford bus fare—no longer dictates how families like mine live.