Kathy Hochul is so eager to win votes by protecting New Yorkers from ICE, she's making up threats -- and ignoring real ones. Admedia Photo / SplashNews.com

Facing a surprisingly strong challenge from Nassau’s Bruce Blakeman, Gov. Kathy Hochul is desperate to run for re-election against President Donald Trump instead: That’s why she just announced $7 million in emergency spending to provide legal representation for migrant minors who . . . already have lawyers.

The gov is so eager to win votes by protecting New Yorkers from ICE, she’s making up threats — and ignoring real ones.

This week she joined Mayor Zohran Mamdani and state Attorney General Tish James to announce $7.25 million to fund attorneys for some 1,400 migrant kids facing removal proceedings, including about 250 in detention — necessary, they claimed, because the Trump administration cancelled federal funding, “abandoning” the kids.

But it hadn’t, Border czar Tom Homan thundered back that night: All it did was switch to a better contract for that representation, one which “defends the children at a better rate than what was being done in the past. There hasn’t been one child at a hearing that hasn’t been represented by a lawyer under this new contract.”

On to the threats Hochul refuses to face: Homan also, quite rightly, slammed the gov for her “sanctuary” policies that shield border-hopping violent criminals from deportation.

Such as denying federal detainers to hold the perps for handover: On his watch, “New York state has denied 14,000 detainers,” Homan fumed — including “6,800 illegal aliens with assault convictions,” 800 convictions for crimes against children, and “770 convictions for rape and other sex crimes.”

Bottom line: “Don’t tell me you’re trying to protect children! You’re releasing predators to the street every day across the state.”

The $7 million Hochul’s wasting on this latest stunt is a drop in the bucket of a state budget that’s soared to $280 billion on her watch — but she owns every drop of the blood that’s shed thanks to her cynical “resistance” to deporting the worst of the worst.