Mamdani’s one-word border answer said it all

“Have you ever been to the U.S.-Mexico border?”

“No.”

One word. That may have been the most revealing moment of New York City Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent interview with the New York Times.

Sanctuary policies are easy to defend from a podium at New York City Hall. They are much harder to defend before communities that have already paid the price.

Mamdani defended his city’s sanctuary policies, which he reinforced after taking office by signing an executive order reaffirming them.

The problem is not so much that Mamdani has never visited the border. It is that he seems unwilling to understand why communities that lived through the border crisis reached a very different conclusion.

That lesson is visible far beyond the Rio Grande.

Consider Goliad County in South Texas. The