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After Zohran Mamdani handily won the New York City mayoral election, becoming the city’s first Muslim and first South Asian mayor-elect, Republican detractors in Washington said they would try to stop him from taking office.
President Donald Trump, who threatened to withhold federal funds to New York City if Mamdani won, lent credence to misleading questions about Mamdani’s citizenship and falsely accused the Ugandan-born 34-year-old of being a communist.
Some Republican lawmakers requested investigations into Mamdani’s naturalisation process and have called for stripping him of his United States citizenship and deporting him, accusing him without evidence of embracing communist and “terrorist” activities.
“If Mamdani lied on his naturalisation documents, he doesn’t get to be a citizen, and he certainly doesn’t get to run for mayor of New York City. A great American city is on the precipice of being run by a communist who has publicly embraced a terroristic ideology,” Representative Andy Ogles from the Republican party said in an October 29 news release, after asking US Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Mamdani.
“The American naturalisation system REQUIRES any alignments with communism or terrorist activities to be disclosed. I’m doubtful he disclosed them. If this is confirmed, put him on the first flight back to Uganda.”
Randy Fine, the Republican representative from Florida, misrepresented Mamdani’s time in the US when he said on October 27 on Newsmax, “The barbarians are no longer at the gate, they’re inside. … And Mamdani, having just moved here eight years ago, is a great example of that, becoming a citizen. Look, it is clear with much of what I have read that he did not meet the definition to gain citizenship.”
PolitiFact found no credible evidence that Mamdani lied on his citizenship application.
Born in Uganda, Mamdani moved to the US in 1998 when he was 7 and became a US citizen in 2018. For adults to become US citizens, they generally must have lived continuously in the country as a lawful permanent resident for five years, or three years if married to a US citizen.
Denaturalisation, the process of revoking a person’s citizenship, can be done only by judicial order. It’s been used sparingly, such as for removing Nazis who fled to the US after World War II or people convicted of or associated with “terrorism”.
Immigration law experts said they have seen no evidence to support Ogles and Fine’s assertions about Mamdani’s application.
“Denaturalisation is an extreme, rare remedy that requires the government to prove either illegal procurement or a willful, material lie – at a minimum, clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence that the fact would have changed the outcome at the time of naturalisation,” said immigration lawyer Jeremy McKinney. “I’ve seen no credible proof he was ineligible when he took the oath or that any omission was material.”
Ogles and Fine did not respond to PolitiFact’s requests for comment by publication.
Attacks on Mamdani’s naturalisation process are flimsy, immigration experts say
The push to question Mamdani’s citizenship started in the summer when he became the Democratic mayoral nominee.
In a June letter to Bondi, Ogles asked the Justice Department to pursue denaturalisation proceedings against Mamdani, “on the grounds that he may have procured US citizenship through willful misrepresentation or concealment of material support for terrorism”.
Ogles cited rap lyrics Mamdani wrote in 2017 supporting the “Holy Land Five”, a reference to five men in the Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim charity, convicted in 2008 of providing material support to the Palestinian group Hamas. Some lawyers have criticised the case’s evidence and use of hearsay.
Ogles and Fine said Mamdani did not disclose his Democratic Socialists of America membership on his citizenship application form; the lawmakers say it’s a communist organisation and Mamdani’s involvement could have disqualified him from citizenship.
The US naturalisation form asks whether applicants have been a member, involved in or associated with any communist or totalitarian party. But the Democratic Socialists of America is not a communist party.
Democratic socialism emerged as an alternative to communism, Harvey Klehr, an Emory University expert on the history of American communism, previously told PolitiFact. Democratic socialists generally “reject the communist hostility to representative democracy, as well as the communist belief in state ownership of the means of production,” Klehr said.
McKinney, the immigration lawyer, said, “DSA membership isn’t a bar to citizenship; failing to list a lawful political group on the (naturalisation form) doesn’t become fraud unless disclosure would have led to a denial. A lyric referencing the Holy Land Five is protected speech absent actual material support to a designated foreign terrorist organisation.”
PolitiFact reached out to Mamdani for comment but did not hear back.
The anti-Muslim rhetoric during the campaign drew criticism from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and even members of the Democratic Party. CAIR, the Muslim advocacy group, called the demand seeking denaturalisation proceedings against Mamdani as racist and Islamophobic.
Mamdani, in an interview with MSNBC in October, also spoke about the anti-Muslim rhetoric during the campaign.
“I think Islamophobia is something that is endemic to politics across this country,” Mamdani told MSNBC.
“And we have seen it normalised. We have seen it accepted. And it has come to a point where to speak up about it is seen as if you are making it into an issue, whereas in fact you are naming that which already exists. And so much of this is driven from an unwillingness to recognise that Muslims belong here in the city.”
A push to keep Mamdani from taking office
The New York Young Republican Club is taking a different tactic, citing the 14th Amendment, the New York Post reported.
The amendment bars from office anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or who has “given aid or comfort to the enemies” of the country. The state GOP group said Mamdani provided “aid and comfort” to US enemies by supporting “pro-Hamas” groups and said he supports gangs through his calls to resist Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
This would be a long-shot push for Congress to declare Mamdani ineligible for office, requiring a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate. If passed, it still could be challenged up to the US Supreme Court.
Immigration experts told PolitiFact that calls to resist ICE agents do not trigger the 14th Amendment, as the relevant clause targets insurrection and aid to wartime enemies, not domestic policy criticism.
How denaturalisation cases take shape
The Justice Department can strip US citizenship by filing criminal charges for naturalisation fraud or a civil lawsuit.
In either case, the government would have to prove that an applicant made a false statement in a citizenship application, and show that the statement would have affected the application.
The government’s standard to clear in a criminal case – proving guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” – is higher than a civil case standard of presenting “clear and convincing evidence.” The more common civil process lacks certain constitutional protections, such as the right to a court-appointed lawyer, Cassandra Burke Robertson, a Case Western Reserve University law professor who studies denaturalisation, said.
Robertson said it’s “extraordinarily unlikely that a proceeding against Mamdani would gain any traction”.
“The bigger risk, in my mind, is the potential chilling effect on individuals with fewer resources who might be afraid to speak out against the government,” Robertson said.
Although denaturalisations generally have been rare in the US, they’ve become more frequent under the Trump administration, Irina Manta, a Hofstra University law professor who studies denaturalisation, said.
In June, the Justice Department issued a memo directing lawyers to prioritise denaturalisation cases. The memo’s list of priority categories includes people whom the administration says pose national security concerns, gang members and a catchall category for “any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue”.
If Mamdani were to have his citizenship revoked, his immigration status would revert to his previous one – lawful permanent residence. That would disqualify him from serving as New York City mayor.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
