Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood by Mahmoud Khalil on Thursday, telling reporters that plans to deport the controversial anti-Israeli activist and Columbia University grad student is an “attack” on freedom.
“Mahmoud Khalil is a New Yorker,” the lefty mayor said at an unrelated Brooklyn press conference. “He should remain in New York City. I see this attack on him as part of a larger attack on the freedom of speech that is especially pronounced when it comes to the use of that speech to stand up for policy to human rights.”
Khalil, 31, a Syrian-born activist, was arrested by ICE early last year, and is slated to be booted from the US after the Trump administration accused him of committing fraud on his green card application.
The Trump administration claims Khalil is a Hamas supporter, and is using a rarely deployed statute that allows for noncitizens to be deported if their beliefs can pose a threat to US foreign policy interests.
The feds are calling for him to be deported to Syria or Algeria.
The activist spent three months in a Louisiana federal lockup before a three-judge panel in New Jersey ruled in June that he should have been allowed to work through the immigration process — a decision overturned by a federal appeals court last week.
On Thursday, Mamdani said he’ll do what he can to keep him in the Big Apple.
“I will make that clear to everyone and I have said time and again that he deserves to stay in the city, he deserves to be in the city just like any other New Yorker,” the mayor said.