New York’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, has hit back hard after Queens Councilwoman Vicki Paladino said Muslims should be “removed from western nations” and singled him out for deportation, even though he is a naturalized U.S. citizen who has lived in the city since he was seven. Mamdani called the remarks “vile Islamophobia” and told his social-media followers, “A million Muslims live in New York City. We belong here, as does every other New Yorker.”
Paladino, a Republican first elected in 2021, posted the comment after a Muslim man from Syria was hailed as a hero for stopping a gunman during the recent Bondi Beach attack. Instead of praising the man, Paladino warned of a “global jihad” and demanded a new law to strip citizenship from American Muslims. She has previously called pro-Palestinian protesters “the worst people our society has ever produced” and shared posts claiming Mamdani “shouldn’t have been allowed into the United States in the first place.”
Mamdani, who became a citizen in 2018 after arriving from Uganda in 1998, said the attacks feel uglier now that he is preparing to take office. “Death threats, Islamophobic bigotry, and now a sitting council member calling for my deportation—enough,” he wrote. “This is what Trump and his sycophants have wrought.” Paladino’s office has not apologized; instead she doubled down, saying the mayor-elect’s election “illustrates perfectly the need for President Trump’s mass deportation policy.”
Leaders from both parties, along with Muslim and Jewish groups, have condemned the councilwoman’s language, warning that elected officials are normalizing hate. Mamdani says he will not let the noise distract him from his transition plans. “I’m not going anywhere,” he told reporters. “I’m here to serve every New Yorker, even those who don’t want me here.”
