Mamdani Says He’s Asked Trump to Drop Immigration Cases Against These Pro-Palestinian Activists

During an unannounced meeting with President Donald Trump last week, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani brought up four pro-Palestinian protesters pursued by federal immigration authorities: Mahmoud Khalil, Yunseo Chung, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Leqaa Kordia.

“I asked that these cases be dropped,” Mamdani said at a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Weeksville Heritage Center Friday. “And the president said that he would look into it.”

The mayor said he also spoke about Ellie Aghayeva, a Columbia undergraduate taken into custody by federal agents, during his meeting with the president Thursday. He said Trump informed him she would be released and Aghayeva was out of custody later that day.

The other four are among a number of pro-Palestinian noncitizens targeted by federal immigration authorities last year, after protests against Israel’s military operation that devastated large parts of Gaza swept through the US. Trump had pledged to crack down on noncitizens protesting Israel, whom he framed as “Hamas sympathizers.” {snip}

Only one of the four – Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman who had lived in Paterson, New Jersey, for close to a decade – is in custody, according to her attorneys. The other three are fighting their immigration cases from home.

The government “targeted individuals who had spoken out in various ways and to various degrees in support of Palestinian human rights,” Brett Max Kaufman, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU who is representing Khalil and Mahdawi, told CNN. “It took these actions against them, to detain and remove them from the country, as retaliation for that speech.”

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The continued immigration proceedings against the four protesters come after a federal judge lambasted Trump and his administration for attacking free speech “under the cover of an unconstitutionally broad definition of Anti-Semitism” used in efforts to deport pro-Palestinian students.

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