Trump’s Threats Against Mamdani Put a Target on the Back of All Immigrants

I used to take my United States citizenship for granted. Don’t get me wrong, I was always aware of the benefits conferred on me by a U.S. passport, but I didn’t give it much more thought than that. My great-grandparents immigrated through Ellis Island, and eventually I happened to be born on a certain tract of land, within certain lines drawn up by men many years ago.

It’s hard to know how many U.S. citizens are children of other U.S. citizens. That granular data isn’t tracked. For more than 150 years, the Fourteenth Amendment has guaranteed birthright citizenship to every child born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. About 85 percent of U.S. residents have citizenship through birthright. Another seven percent of the country — or 24.5 million people — are naturalized U.S. citizens.

But over the past several months, Donald Trump has given lie to the idea that citizenship was ever objective or resolute. When Trump’s presidency goes down in the bowels of history, he will be remembered for his fervid and unlawful crusade to remold the fabric of the U.S. population in his image — with immigration agents as his key executors. A mass deportation agenda once pitched as targeting the “worst of the worst” has quickly expanded into an all-out assault on immigrant populations, sweeping up citizens and non-citizens alike.

Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly weaponized immigration status to silence his critics, targeting and deporting what he’s called “the enemy from within.” First, he went after the visas of international college students, especially those students who protested to demand an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Then, when the Trump administration learned that Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil was in fact a lawful permanent resident, officials attempted to revoke his green card and deport him too. Now, we’re seeing the goal posts shift yet again: In a June 11 memo, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it is prioritizing efforts to strip naturalized Americans of their citizenship.

One man in particular has been at the center of the right’s latest denaturalization campaign. Last week, Trump amplified baseless claims — circulated online by racist extremists — that Zohran Mamdani, the New York City Democratic mayoral candidate, could be living in the U.S. without authorization. He also said he would have Mamdani arrested if he interferes with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the city.

Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda, to one Indian parent and one Ugandan parent of Indian descent, and moved to New York City at age seven. He became naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 2018 and was elected to the New York state assembly two years later. Still, Trump told reporters on July 1 that “a lot of people are saying he’s here illegally” and vowed that his administration would “look at everything.”

Whether or not the administration moves forward on its threat to revoke Mamdani’s citizenship, Trump’s comments clearly aim to intimidate opponents and curb Mamdani’s enforcement of New York City’s sanctuary city policies, should he be elected mayor. Republicans have already threatened to arrest and criminally prosecute several Democratic mayors of sanctuary cities — even as courts have long upheld the legality of policies that restrict local law enforcement from collaborating with ICE. Brandishing Mamdani’s status as an international-born, naturalized U.S. citizen, and painting it as something subject to the Oval Office’s whims, is just another ugly iteration of Trump’s crackdown on dissent.

History has also shown us that authoritarian regimes readily exploit legal frameworks, eroding the already-porous bounds of legality to further repression.

The ominous rhetoric puts a target on the back of all naturalized politicians who might seek to push back against the current administration, but immigrant mayors are particularly vulnerable, given their unique role in having to organize and implement the sanctuary policies that Trump is directly threatening. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if Trump broadens the scope of his attacks to target progressive members of Congress who are naturalized citizens, such as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), who was born in Somalia, or Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), who was born in India.

The Trump administration claims it’s only going to target the citizenship of people who have committed crimes, but that provides no comfort. We’ve seen how quickly this administration has weaponized allegations of “criminality” to further political goals — sanctuary cities, for instance, are not illegal, but the administration has repeatedly claimed that they are. And in his push to revoke international student visas, Trump has falsely claimed that protesting against Israel’s genocide in Gaza amounts to illegal support for terrorist organizations.

History has also shown us that authoritarian regimes readily exploit legal frameworks, eroding the already-porous bounds of legality to further repression. In 1940s Germany, for instance, the Nazis engaged in a perfectly legal mass denaturalization campaign that rendered thousands of Jewish people and political adversaries stateless.

Trump has made it clear that his issues with Mamdani are ideological. On July 8, Trump ramped up his diatribe against Mamdani by suggesting to reporters during a Cabinet meeting that the White House would somehow take control of New York City if the Democratic socialist is elected mayor in November. “If a communist gets elected to run New York, it can never be the same. But we have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to,” Trump said.

Still, while Trump’s authoritarian second term has brought the U.S. to a point of Constitutional crisis, denaturalization itself isn’t new. It was heavily used as a political tool during Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade of the late 1940s and 1950s — a political movement known as McCarthyism. Back then, fears about the spread of communism led to more than 20,000 denaturalization cases per year. It’s deeply troubling that we’re now in a period of intense political repression that meets and exceeds the McCarthyist blueprint. But let us not forget that the Red Scare eventually fell out of favor. McCarthy was censured by the Senate and exposed for his baseless accusations.

We must not let Trump’s threats dissuade us from speaking out for what is right, pushing back against political persecution and standing up for our neighbors regardless of immigration status. After all, at the end of the day, your citizenship won’t protect you from an authoritarian regime — but your community might.