Mayor Zohran Mamdani is floating a plan to delay payments into New York City’s municipal pension funds — his latest effort to stave off service cuts and a property tax increase as he grapples with a multibillion-dollar budget gap.

The plan, which the mayor’s team has presented to the administration of Gov. Kathy Hochul, could save the city at least $1 billion in the upcoming fiscal year, according to a person familiar with the discussions, and would be unlikely to affect pension payments for current retirees.

Mr. Mamdani’s team said it has yet to iron out the details. Any cost-cutting plan would most likely involve extending the deadline for the city to meet its long-term pension obligations beyond 2032, when it is scheduled to be up-to-date on its payments.

“While our administration has not yet put forward a specific proposal, we are actively assessing options for pension amortization,” Mr. Mamdani’s spokesman, Joe Calvello, said.

Similar proposals have drawn opposition from unions and fiscal watchdogs, with one leading budget expert warning they merely delay the city’s fiscal responsibility to avoid meaningful reductions in spending.

“The city is on a path to correct past fiscal mistakes and properly fund its pension obligations,” said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group. “It shouldn’t reverse course and stretch this out and make our children pay even more of our bills.”

One iteration of this proposal, presented this month by Julie Menin, speaker of the City Council, projected more than $1.2 billion in savings annually. An effort pushed unsuccessfully by former Mayor Eric Adams last year would have reduced costs by an estimated $1.3 billion in its first year.

Any delay to pension payments would need the approval of Ms. Hochul, who declined to comment.

Pension payments present a continuing liability for the city, which has a large unionized work force that has historically negotiated attractive retirement packages. The city’s total obligation to the five municipal pension systems for existing benefits, through 2032, amounts to $38.9 billion, according to data from the Citizens Budget Commission.

In 2013, under then-Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the city reformed its mandated pension payments following a drop in the assumed rate of return to 7 percent from 8 percent. That reduction meant the city had to pay more money upfront, creating a roughly $60 billion unfunded mandate. To address that, city and state leaders agreed to stretch out payments for future bills through 2032, at which point the added obligation was expected to be paid off.

The costs related to that change account for more than half of the city’s $10.5 billion pension expense this year, according to Ms. Menin’s office — a liability that is likely to grow.

Further delaying pension payments would significantly help Mr. Mamdani as he grapples with a $5.4 billion deficit through June 2027, which he has sought to reverse with risky and unpopular proposals, like raiding the city’s reserves and raising property taxes. He is also pushing Ms. Hochul to increase income taxes on wealthy residents, a proposal that is popular among Democratic state lawmakers but unlikely to get her backing. And he is asking her for more state aid to plug the hole as he navigates his first budget as mayor.

He is expecting to cut $1.3 billion from the current deficit by not expanding a housing voucher program and delaying, with Ms. Hochul’s blessing, a requirement to reduce school class sizes.

The plan backed by Mr. Adams, which Ms. Hochul tried to advance last year, ran into opposition from unions. Officials representing the pension fund for the United Federation of Teachers specifically raised flags about the Adams administration’s ability to carry out the plan, given concerns about the competency of the mayor, who was then under indictment, according to someone familiar with the matter.

Mr. Calvello said that the options being discussed were “distinct from the approach previously advanced by the Adams administration.”

Presidents of the city’s largest public-sector unions, Henry Garrido of District Council 37 and Michael Mulgrew of the teachers’ union, declined to comment on this development.

Mr. Rein urged city officials to consider other approaches to addressing the budget crisis.

“The city’s fiscal problem is a self-inflicted spending affordability crisis,” he said. “The best way to deal with that is to increase spending that works but eliminate spending that doesn’t improve New Yorkers’ life.”

A spokesman for Ms. Menin said she would review the mayor’s proposal when it reaches her desk. She is responsible for negotiating the city’s $127 billion budget with the mayor before it takes effect on July 1.

Mark Levine, the city’s comptroller, called Mr. Mamdani’s nascent proposal “a prudent step.”

“But the once-in-a-generation short-term savings this generates must be used wisely,” Mr. Levine added, “both to support the civil servants who pay into the system and to strengthen the city’s resilience against future fiscal and economic shocks, not as a way to avoid addressing our structural budget challenges.”

The father of an infant who was killed earlier this month when a stray bullet struck her was the target of the shooter, the police said on Tuesday.

The infant, Kaori Patterson-Moore, was sitting in a stroller near her parents, outside a deli in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn on April 1, when two men on a motorbike sped up to the corner of Humboldt and Moore Streets, according to the police.

One of the men, who the police later identified as Amuri Greene, 21, fired shots into a crowd of adults and children, striking the baby and her 2-year-old brother, who was grazed in the back. The men then sped off as the baby’s father, Jamari Patterson, began screaming and picked up his lifeless child, according to witnesses. The two men have been arrested and charged with murder in the death of the 7-month-old girl. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Mr. Greene, who was caught that day, later told the police that he had wanted to shoot Mr. Patterson, a gang rival who he said had shot at him the day before, said Joseph Kenny, the chief of detectives for the New York Police Department.

Chief Kenny said the detectives had not recovered any evidence that Mr. Patterson tried to shoot Mr. Greene the day before his daughter was killed.

“There is no indication that it even took place,” Chief Kenny said.

The two men, Mr. Greene and the driver of the motorbike, Mathew Rodriguez, 18, “went out with purpose” to Williamsburg that day, Chief Kenny said. “They went out there to take a life.”

Both men were arraigned earlier this month on several charges including murder. Mr. Rodriguez fled after the shooting to rural Pennsylvania where he was with family and was caught two days later by the police in Barrett Township, two hours northwest of Williamsburg near the Pocono Mountains.

Just before his arraignment, as he was led to a police vehicle, Mr. Rodriguez wept and insisted he did not know Mr. Greene had planned to shoot at the crowd.

“I promise I didn’t know,” Mr. Rodriguez yelled at reporters. “I didn’t know it was going to happen.”

The two gangs have been targeting each other for years, committing acts of violence to settle grievances that arise out of social media posts, including rap songs that threaten and taunt each other, Chief Kenny said.

The feuds, like many that the police say drive gang violence in the city, are based more on historical tensions over geography, with groups of people shooting at one another because they live in different neighborhoods or housing projects.

“Historically, there would be gang wars over territory for drugs, territory for prostitution, money making, credit card fraud,” Chief Kenny said. The more recent feuds come “down to them simply disrespecting each other during these rap videos,” he added. “It’s geography. It’s development versus development.”

Right after the arrest, Mr. Greene waived his Miranda rights and confessed he was the shooter, Chief Kenny said.

The shooting, during daylight hours on a busy Brooklyn street, stunned city officials and residents of the neighborhood.

A large crowd, including Attorney General Letitia James, Representative Nydia Velazquez and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, appeared at a vigil earlier this month for the baby.

“My family is broken, I am broken,” said Arlene Poitier, the baby’s great-grandmother. “I don’t have her to sleep with me at night anymore.”

A makeshift memorial had been set up outside the deli, where the sidewalk was festooned with dozens of colorful votive candles, mylar balloons and oversized stuffed animals.

Nestled among the keepsakes was a photo collage of Kaori and two posters that read, “Don’t Shoot. I Want To Grow Up.”

Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

The sun poked above the horizon one bright March morning in the sprawling suburbs of Long Island. A fleet of federal vehicles began their daily search for immigrants.

They were followed, as usual, by Osman Canales, the roving neighborhood watch leader who has 100,000 Facebook followers and an entourage of secret lookouts. With one hand on the wheel of his black Jeep Grand Cherokee and another gripping a bullhorn, he telegraphed a warning:

“ICE is here!” Mr. Canales shouted in Spanish. “Stay home!”

President Trump’s immigration crackdown has played out most graphically in big cities run by Democrats, where aggressive tactics by federal agents have dominated headlines and fanned partisan debate. But in those cities, immigrant arrest rates have been erratic, spiking and plummeting.

The rhythm of detentions has been more steady in car-dependent places like Long Island, where agents have the advantage of stealth and where immigrants live far from the eye of news cameras. Just east of New York City’s jampacked boroughs, the arrest rates since last August have been consistently higher than in the city and the Hudson Valley.

The detention rate on Long Island has been about 60 percent higher than in the city and Hudson Valley since Mr. Trump took office. The rate remains slightly lower than in the rest of the country.

The expansive roads of Long Island have been fertile terrain for agents to capture migrants without the scrutiny that has often accompanied officials’ actions in big cities. Residents must drive for miles to get to work or to go grocery shopping, allowing officers to detain them during traffic stops beyond the critical eye of observers.

“It’s harder to say something when you’re in your car driving in a suburban area,” said Serena Martin, an immigration advocate and the executive director of New Hour for Women and Children, an organization that helps mothers, women and children whose lives have been affected by incarceration. “It’s not that people care any less. We just aren’t on the street walking in the way that people in urban areas have the ability to do to quickly mobilize, to take the photos, to take the video.”

On Long Island, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested about 12 people a day in early March, compared with about one a day in 2024. Nationwide, ICE agents were making more than 1,000 arrests per day in early March, compared with about 300 a day in 2024.

Deep-blue cities such as Chicago, Minneapolis and New York have vowed not to work with ICE, and protesters there have foiled large immigration operations by leaping quickly into action in substantial numbers. Federal agents in Manhattan have sometimes struggled to carry out arrests. Activists have chased them during a street raid, barricaded a garage where they were parked and staged a protest at a hotel where they were staying.

The pace of immigration arrests in the New York City area has remained at an elevated level since last summer — a contrast to the operations in Chicago and Minneapolis, where arrests skyrocketed for a month or two and then calmed down.

Arrests in Illinois fell from about 70 a day in October 2025 to about 10 a day at the beginning of March. In Minnesota, they fell from more than 80 a day in January to just about three a day. At the same time, arrests in the New York City area went from about 30 a day in January to about 28 a day in early March.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to discuss operations, but officials suggested that cities choosing to cooperate with ICE have less crime.

“Partnerships with law enforcement are critical to having the resources we need to arrest criminal illegal aliens across the country,” D.H.S. said in a statement. “We have had tremendous success when local law enforcement work with us.”

In Nassau County, the Long Island county closer to New York City, federal agents are aided by a partnership between local police and the Trump administration that empowers law enforcement officers to assist in enforcing immigration laws and transfer people into ICE custody. The agreement is known as Section 287(g) of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act. And Nassau County isn’t alone.

A growing number of 287(g) agreements have been adopted across the country since Mr. Trump returned to office. In January 2025, 133 state and local agencies had agreements, according to a study by the American Civil Liberties Union. Since then, ICE has announced agreements with at least 1,000 agencies.

Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive who is the Republican nominee for New York governor and an ally of Mr. Trump’s, has vowed to fight a proposal by Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, to ban officers from working with ICE through 287(g) agreements. Mr. Blakeman has passed several policies to help federal agents, including the deployment of local detectives to assist with deportations.

“Because of the county’s cooperation with ICE, we have removed over 2,000 illegal migrants with criminal records ranging from attempted murder, to rape, to car jacking and drug dealing,” said Chris Boyle, a spokesman for Mr. Blakeman. “It is a safer county.”

ICE agents have turned Nassau County’s fire stations into rest stops, pulling into parking lots to take a break from patrolling. Sandra Valencia, who runs a youth leadership program on Long Island through Rural & Migrant Ministry, an advocacy group, said that agents park outside schools after classes are released, frightening parents.

“Children of Republican parents have intimidated our kids,” Ms. Valencia said in Spanish. “They showed up to school with American flags.”

Latinos on Long Island have accused ICE of discrimination. In a lawsuit filed April 8, five residents of Latino descent said that agents unlawfully stopped and arrested them based solely on their race and ethnicity, with no regard for their immigration status, in violation of federal laws and regulations. The agency did not respond to an inquiry about the litigation.

Long Islanders have made plans in the event of their own arrest, asking family members to take care of relatives or property left behind. One woman who is living in the country illegally and spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared reprisal said that in June, she decided to pack a bag with blankets, mittens, hats and a sleep sack for her 1-year-old baby in case they wound up in a frigid detention center.

Teenagers said they have felt shocked to see families unravel around them. Some said they worried that losing a parent or a sibling would risk their academic pursuits or deplete their family’s income.

Fernanda Mejia, 16, is the daughter of a bagel store worker who was detained in June while agents were searching for another person. In a tearful plea to the Republican-controlled Nassau County Legislature in July, she said that she was heartbroken to lose her father and urged the governing body to stop helping ICE arrest migrants like him. She said her father had no history of criminal behavior, and The New York Times found no evidence of a criminal background.

“My name is Fernanda Mejia,” she said, her voice trembling as she approached the lectern while wearing a ruffled skirt and a pink bow in her hair. “My dad was taken by ICE.”

Howard J. Kopel, the presiding officer, cut her off, drawing protests from audience members who demanded to hear more. When Fernanda finished speaking, Mr. Kopel was terse.

“I wish you good luck,” Mr. Kopel said. “I hope it works out. All right, next.”

Mr. Kopel declined an interview request through a spokeswoman.

Fernanda’s father had been deported to El Salvador. In her messy bedroom, piled with stuffed animals, makeup brushes and Polaroids, she keeps the gifts he sent from detention — a bracelet that he spooled together with broken rosaries and a necklace made out of beads shaped from bread.

Many adults around Fernanda barely go outside. Some depend on Facebook posts from Mr. Canales, the neighborhood watch leader.

On that bright March morning, Mr. Canales drove for hours before he found out agents had quietly arrested someone. He stopped for lunch at a Mexican restaurant, where the owner thanked him with a free torta and lamented a lack of customers.

Defeated, Mr. Canales finished eating, climbed back into his Jeep and braced for the next day.

Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.