00:00Across this country, day after day, we bear witness to cruelty that staggers the conscience.
00:08Mast agents, paid by our own tax dollars, violate the Constitution and visit terror
00:15upon our neighbors.
00:17They arrive as if atop a pale horse, and they leave a path of wreckage in their wake.
00:23People ripped from their cars, guns drawn against the unarmed, families torn apart, lives
00:30shattered, quietly, swiftly, brutally.
00:35If these are not attacks upon the stranger among us, what is?
00:40This cruelty is no far away concept.
00:43ICE operates here in New York, in our courthouses, our workplaces.
00:49They skulk at 26 Federal Plaza, the same building where I waited in fear as my father had his
00:54citizenship interview.
00:56If these are not attacks upon the stranger among us, what is?
01:01ICE is more than a rogue agency.
01:04It is a manifestation of the abuse of power.
01:16And it is also new.
01:19It was founded only in 2002.
01:22Four mayors ago, it did not exist.
01:25Its wrongs need not be treated as inevitable or inherited.
01:29In fact, we know that there is no reforming something so rotten and so base.
01:37I think of a story that Reverend Galbraith, the senior pastor at Clarendon Road Church who
01:45is here with us today, shared recently.
01:48Two Haitian immigrants in his congregation, a father and son, had traveled to 26 Federal
01:54Plaza for fingerprinting.
01:56The man's wife, the boy's mother, had gone the week before without incident.
02:01They thought little of the trip.
02:03It was routine.
02:04In New York, surely, one would be safe at an appointment like this.
02:09And then without explanation or warning, they were whisked away.
02:13ICE took them first to the Brooklyn Detention Center.
02:16The next day, they were flown to Louisiana.
02:19They felt hopeless and helpless, Reverend Galbraith said.
02:24Hopeless and helpless.
02:27If these are not attacks upon the stranger among us, what is?
02:32As the federal government attacks our neighbors, those who worship in just the next pew over,
02:37they command us not to believe what we see.
02:40They compel us, as George Orwell wrote nearly 80 years ago, to reject the evidence of our eyes
02:47and our ears.
02:49And they would succeed, were it not for the many among us who have not only read the scripture,
02:54but who live the scripture, those who refuse to abandon the stranger.
02:59I speak of Renee Good, whose final words to the man who murdered her moments later were,
03:05I'm not mad at you.
03:07I speak of Alex Preddy, who died as he lived, caring for the stranger.
03:12Here was a man who held the hand of the afraid and the afflicted in their final moments.
03:16Here was a man who dedicated his life to healing those he had never met.
03:21I shot him ten times because he did something they could never fathom doing themselves.
03:27He extended his arm towards a stranger.
03:30Not to push her down, but to help her up.
03:33I speak of the tens of thousands across our city and our nation who took to snow-bound streets
03:39in the dead of winter, refusing to allow those with the most power to impose their will
03:44upon those with the least.
03:46If that is not love for the stranger among us, what is?
03:50In a moment such as this, I look to the Bhagavad Gita, which teaches us that the highest calling
03:55is to become someone who sees the true equality of all living beings and responds to the joys
04:01and sorrows of others as if they were their own.
04:05Each of us has been a stranger at one point in our lives.
04:09Each of us has known the feeling of arriving somewhere new alone, of depending on the kindness
04:14of someone else.
04:16As ICE fosters a culture of suspicion and fear, let this city of strangers set an example for
04:22how to make the sorrows of others our own.
04:26Let us offer a new path, one of defiance through compassion.
04:30In so doing, we can offer something more expansive and durable than a mere rejection of atrocity.
04:36We can rely on our faith to offer an embrace of one another.
04:42After all, few forces hold as much power to extend humanity to all.
04:49As Dr. King once said, the church is the one place where a doctor ought to forget that
04:54he's a doctor.
04:55The church is the one place where the lawyer ought to forget that he's a lawyer.
04:59When the church is true to its nature, it says, whosoever will, let him come.
05:05That doctrine, whosoever will, let him come, is not limited to Christianity.
05:11Each of our faiths asks us the same.
05:14I think of Exodus 23, 9, the words of the Torah,
05:18Thou shalt not oppress a stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers
05:23in the land of Egypt.
05:25Few have stood so steadfast alongside the persecuted as Jewish New Yorkers.
05:30I think of Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, who gave their lives alongside James Cheney
05:34so that all could exercise the right to the franchise.
05:38I think of Rabbi Heschel, who marched from Selma alongside Dr. King.
05:42And I think of Yip Harburg, who wrote Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and uplifted Americans waiting
05:48on breadlines during the Great Depression.
05:51I think of the freedom from suffering that Buddhism teaches us is only possible if we remove the
05:56three poisons of desire, hatred, and ignorance from our daily lives.
06:02We need not accept suffering as unchangeable.
06:05We need not treat hatred as the natural state.
06:09We have the power to set ourselves free.
06:13And I consider my own faith Islam, a religion built upon a narrative of migration.
06:19The story of the Hijrah reminds us that Prophet Muhammad ï·ș was a stranger too, who fled Mecca
06:27and was welcomed in Medina.
06:30Surah Nahl 1642 tells us, as for those who immigrated in the cause of Allah after being persecuted,
06:36we will surely bless them with a good home in this world.
06:40Or as the Prophet Muhammad ï·ș said, Islam began as something strange and will go back to
06:47being strange.
06:48So glad tidings to the strangers.
06:52If faith offers us the moral compass to stand alongside the stranger, government can provide
07:06the resources.
07:07Let us create a new expectation of City Hall, where power is wielded to love, to embrace,
07:14and to protect.
07:15We will stand with the stranger today, tomorrow, and all the days that are still to come.
07:28And that is why this morning, right here in this moment, I shall sign an executive order
07:34that will uphold our City's protection not just of our fellow immigrant New Yorkers, but
07:38of all New Yorkers, from abusive immigration enforcement.
08:05This order is a sweeping reaffirmation of our commitment to our immigrant neighbors and
08:10to public safety as a whole.
08:12We will make it clear, once again, that ICE will not be able to enter New York City property
08:16without a judicial warrant.
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