Opinion: Zohran Kwame Mamdani and the Importation of America’s Enemies

By John F. Di Leo, Opinion Contributor

Zohran Kwame Mamdani doesn’t exactly sound like an American name, does it?

And yet, since the June primary, it’s the name of the Democrat candidate for Mayor of New York City, arguably the most important city in the United States, and in many ways, the financial and cultural capital of the world.

He was born in Uganda in 1991, and his parents (a muslim Indian professor and a Hindu Indian filmmaker) gave him that middle name in honor of Kwame Nkrumah, the marxist dictator of Ghana. While his parents may have been born into different religions, they clearly shared the same toxic political philosophy.

Arriving in the United States at age 7, he was steeped in his parents’ marxist beliefs, went to school and college, became a political activist and rapper, and pursued naturalization as a United States citizen, receiving his citizenship in 2018.

Mamdani was elected as a New York State Assemblyman in 2020 and now, with four years in Albany under his belt, he jumped at the chance to run for Mayor of New York.

He may live to regret that choice.

Had he remained a state rep, unknown and unnoticed outside New York, he might have been able to remain a somewhat powerful local marxist activist. But now that he’s gained national recognition as a candidate for NYC’s mayor, fully committed to every one of the modern Democrats’ most destructive policies, people have begun to look into his background, and those people are rightly horrified at what they see.

Mamdani has spent his life allied with the radical jihadist sect known as Shia islam (the 12th imam cult that, at this writing, still rules Iran, the world’s primary sponsor of terrorist groups for the past 46 years).

If he had kept to himself as a private citizen, this anti-semitic and anti-American allegiance might not have developed into anything actionable, but he has chosen a life in politics, and his bigoted ideology has manifested in numerous personal efforts over the years.

In college, he co-founded the Bowdoin College chapter of the Students for Justice in Palatine, a global student group known for funding such terrorist groups as Hamas and spreading the Hamas philosophy on college campuses.

As an adult, he has been an advocate for the “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” (BDS) movement, a broad worldwide effort to apply the illegal goals of the Arab League’s boycott against Israel, which has been formally banned in the United States for 50 years.

And as a candidate today, he advocates supporting Hamas in its attacks on Israel, calling for the “globalization of the intifada” when he addresses his fellow jihadists.

As one would expect, Mamdani is wrong on virtually every political issue; he’s a marxist, not an American. He’s proud of his membership in the Democratic Socialists of America, and aligns with the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.

But it’s the above connections to Hamas and their fellow travelers that may unexpectedly serve to protect New York from the utterly destructive plans this candidate wants to impose on New York.

America is a free country; our native born and legitimately nationalized citizens are allowed to espouse all sorts of unpleasant, even dangerous, politics without effect, protected as we are by the First Amendment.

But the same doesn’t go for non-citizens. A non-citizen who supports a terrorist group, or who furthers their cause, can be deported. And such an anti-American activist certainly can’t legally become a US citizen.

Now let’s think back on this young budding politician’s political career. He was supporting Hamas and the other global united forces against Israel, way back when he was in college. He didn’t just attend the occasional meeting; he was a co-founder of the group at Bowdoin.

And he never retreated from those positions. From his college days in the early 2010s through his politically active 20s and his arrival in the state legislature, his positions in support of organizations recognized as illegal terrorist associations has been constant and unchanging.

And when did he gain U.S. citizenship? In 2018.

This means that he took the citizenship oath while simultaneously being an active supporter of anti-American terrorist groups, a clear and absolute disqualifier for American citizenship.

Had it been noticed at the time, his citizenship application would have been denied.

Since it wasn’t noticed at the time, but the evidence is virtually undeniable, his citizenship application can be recognized, retroactively, as fraudulent, and he can be stripped of his naturalization and deported.

But will that happen?

That’s a tough call. Traditionally, American bureaucracy is hesitant to get involved in politics that way. There are voters who have chosen this man as a candidate; one might argue that the government should defer to the voters in this case, and disregard his federal crimes.

If the Trump administration were to choose to exercise their undeniable right to strip Mamdani of citizenship and deport him, the Democrats will definitely accuse the administration, rightly or wrongly, of interfering in an election.

So we must ask: Is there precedent for such interference?

What if, just as a hypothetical, one state, or perhaps all the states, had nominated Donald Trump to the presidency, and even elected him, and some aggressive prosecutors thought they could prosecute him for an obscure valuation argument on a mortgage loan, or an undeclared private payment by his attorney, or in fact any other convoluted misdemeanor that some aggressive local DA felt like stretching into a felony… with the intent of meddling with his reelection bid.

How many Democratic politicians would have stopped such an effort, just because it would have interfered with President Trump’s campaigns? Well, as we have seen, virtually no Democrat ever stepped up to argue against such tactics.

So if any Democrat were to argue against such action today where Mamdani is concerned, they would be exposed as particularly shameful hypocrites, wouldn’t they?

From a political perspective, it would be awful for New York for the second-place finisher in that primary – disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo – to proceed to the nomination following Mamdani’s ouster. Cuomo should never be considered for public office again, and we all know he hopes to use the mayoralty to launch a presidential run. That would be dreadful, for New York, the nation, and the world.

But even so – if the citizenship process is to be meaningful – if our laws about behavior and commitment to American values are worth more than the paper they’re printed on, and if our citizenship oath is to mean anything more than a meaningless historical reference – then we do need to enforce the law when an anti-American activist is caught dead to rights in a lie on his citizenship application.

We reject citizenship applications all the time on fraud grounds, when they are based on sham marriages. Surely the ongoing support of our terrorist enemies provides an even stronger case for denial of citizenship than that.
Zohran Nkrume Mamdani should have been tossed out of the country when he started allying himself with Hamas front groups.

The defense of America’s borders isn’t just the physical monitoring of our borders with Mexico and Canada; it’s also the funding and support of a research arm in the citizenship courts. We need the federal government to check who is applying for citizenship, and to reject those applicants who clearly intend to be termites, burrowing from within on behalf of our foreign enemies.

And the prosecution and disqualification of Zohran Nkrume Mamdani would be an excellent, high profile way to send a message to all of America’s enemies that we are simply not going to sit back and invite in the enemies who want to undermine our nation, anymore.

Copyright 2025 John F. Di Leo