President Trump on Tuesday floated an outlandish claim that Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for New York mayor, was an illegal immigrant and threatened to arrest him if he blocked immigration arrests in New York City.
Mr. Mamdani was born in Uganda and has lived in New York City since 1998, when he was 7 years old. He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 2018. If elected, Mr. Mamdani would also be the first Muslim to become mayor of New York City. There is no credible evidence to suggest Mr. Mamdani is not, or shouldn’t be, a U.S. citizen.
Mr. Trump’s attack on the mayoral candidate echoed language he has long used to lend credibility to falsehoods. “A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally,” he said of Mr. Mamdani. “We’re going to look at everything.”
When a journalist raised the possibility that Mr. Mamdani “will not allow” ICE to make immigration arrests, Mr. Trump replied, “Well then we’ll have to arrest him.”
“The president of the United States just threatened to have me arrested,” Mr. Mamdani said in a response on social media, adding that Mr. Trump’s 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 shadows: If you speak up, they will come for you.”
He continued, “We will not accept this intimidation.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has so far declined to endorse Mr. Mamdani, rallied behind him after Mr. Trump’s attacks.
“I don’t care if you’re the President of the United States,” Ms. Hochul wrote on social media. “If you threaten to unlawfully go after one of our neighbors, you’re picking a fight with 20 million New Yorkers — starting with me.”
The attack was the latest effort by Mr. Trump to promote far-fetched conspiracy theories about his political opponents: He used a similar attack to falsely accuse Nikki Haley, his rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, of not being eligible for the presidency. Later that year, he falsely questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’s identity as a Black woman.
And Mr. Trump’s attack against Mr. Mamdani echoed the lie that raised his profile in the Republican Party ahead of his 2016 run for president: that President Barack Obama was not legitimately elected because he was not born in the United States.
Mr. Mamdani, who ran a spirited, disciplined campaign that focused on the cost of living, has been targeted by Republicans who have painted him as a boogeyman of far-left politics. They have highlighted his age and criticism of Israel and — in some instances — denigrated his religion.
Representative Andy Ogles, a hard-right Tennessee Republican, used Islamophobic language to attack Mr. Mamdani on social media last week and called for him to be deported. Other Republican lawmakers made similar attacks.
During a news conference on Monday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, laughed when asked about Mr. Ogles’s calls for deportation and whether Mr. Trump supported them.
“I haven’t heard him say that,” she said. “I haven’t heard him call for that, but certainly he does not want this individual to be elected.”
