Zohran Mamdani on His Family’s Experience With Immigration Court and His Plans for ICE in NYC

Zohran Mamdani has felt the fear that stalks the halls of New York City’s immigration courts in the Trump era. The mayor-elect found himself waiting nervously on a Manhattan sidewalk when his father, who is Indian-Ugandan, was called in for his citizenship interview. “I was there earlier this year outside of 26 Federal Plaza,” Mamdani said in an interview with TPM. “I spent four hours waiting not knowing what was going to happen.” During President Donald Trump’s second term, these types of legal proceedings have often ended in violent encounters between masked agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and immigrants who are seeking to become Americans. The building where Mamdani’s father had his interview has been ground zero for this phenomenon. ”I was lucky, unlike many New Yorkers, in that my father came down and out of 26 Federal Plaza.” As they embraced, Mamdani said, he reflected on how much things have changed as a result of Trump’s mass deportation agenda. “I remember hugging him and my mother, and knowing that that is a feeling that too many New Yorkers are being denied because a site of what was, by and large, routine immigration check-ins has instead become the focal point of deportation efforts in this city,” he said. Over the past month, TPM has chronicled this unprecedented wave of courthouse detentions for our series on mass deportation - and the resistance movement that has risen up to confront it. In an exclusive conversation on Sunday night, Mamdani, who takes office on Jan. 1, shared details of his recent Oval Office sit-down with the president. Mamdani also talked with us about his family’s experience with the notorious immigration courts, his own work to support immigrants, and his vow to ensure New York remains a “sanctuary city” despite threats from Trump. During those fraught hours outside 26 Federal Plaza, as he waited for his father to emerge, Mamdani said he stood outside and was in touch “on the phone with a lawyer ready to file pro se if needed.” That strategy, where immigrants, equipped with advice and assistance, represent themselves in court, has been facilitated by the networks of legal clinics that are a major part of the movement fighting back against ICE in New York and around the country. And Mamdani was already familiar with these tactics from his own work providing similar services to immigrants as a state assemblyman in Queens, one of the most diverse counties in the nation. “This began when an uncle in the neighborhood - no relation ... I knew him from a mosque in the neighborhood - he called me and he said that there were a number of, as he described it, West African brothers who were asylum seekers, and had nowhere to go,” Mamdani recounted. “They’d gathered in a local community organization ... and he asked me to come and see them.” That meeting resulted in a “partnership” between Mamdani’s state Assembly office and the community organization, he said. “Now...

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