NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani issued a statement Tuesday after President Donald Trump said his administration would have to arrest Mamdani if he stops ICE from doing its work as NYC mayor. Mamdani has won the democratic primary and will face the general election in November. Trump who denounced Mamdani profusely and called him a lunatic and a communist was responding to a question on Mamdani’s election promise that he would not allow ICE to arrest and deport New Yorkers. “Well then we’ll have just to arrest him. Look, we don’t need a communist in this country but if we have one, I’m going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation. We send him money, we send him all the things that he needs to run a government and by the way, they get already about three times what you get. If you look at per capita, Florida gets one-third of what New York gets,” Trump said as he hosted an immigration roundtable at New Florida Detention Facility.“A lot of people are saying he (Mamdani) is here illegally. You know we are going to look over everything. And ideally, he’s going to turn out to be much less than a communist but right now he’s a communist. That’s not a socialist,” Trump said.
‘We will not accept this intimidation’
“The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported. Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city,” Mamdani said in his statement. “His statements don’t just represent an attack on our democracy but an attempt to send a message to every New Yorker who refuses to hide in the shadow: if you speak up, they will come for you.”
Row over Mamdani’s citizenship
Several Republicans pushed for cancelling Mamdani’s citizenship as he became a US citizen only in 2018. But Mamdani is a legal citizen who came to the US in 1998 when he was seven years old.Earlier, Trump threatened that he would cut federal funds to New York if Mamdani becomes the mayor and does not cooperate with his administration.
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