New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani was slammed for his Gracie Mansion breakfast with Mahmoud Khalil and his family on a day that also marked the one-year anniversary of Khalil’s detention. Mamdani said he and his wife Rama Duwaji were honored to welcome Mahmoud Khalil, his wife Noor and their son Deen to the mayor’s residence to break the fast together. “Mahmoud is a New Yorker, and he belongs in New York City,” Mamdani wrote as he posted a photo where Mahmoud Khalil can be seen at the breakfast table smiling.“A year ago, Mahmoud was walking home through our city after sharing an iftar with his wife Noor when he was detained by federal agents, flown to Louisiana, and then held in an ICE facility for months. In that time, he was forced to miss the birth of his first child. All of this for exercising his First Amendment rights in protesting the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” the NYC mayor posted. “And yet, even in the face of that cruelty, there has also been beauty. New Yorkers raising their voices in solidarity. A city refusing to look away. Mahmoud won his freedom, and a father was finally reunited with his child,” the post read. MAGA activist Laura Loomer called this ‘outrageous’ and called the NYC mayor a national security threat. “Are you going to invite Emir Balat into your home too?” one wrote, referring to the arrest of two ISIS supporters from trying to detonate explosive devices in front of Mamdani’s residence during a protest. “I’m extremely offended by this photo as a Jewish New Yorker. This man harassed Jewish students and is antisemitic! How could you think this photo would ok to post on government socials?? As a Jewish community advocate I want an apology immediately!!!” another wrote. “This is incredibly offensive to the Jewish community as Mahmoud Khalil spent the last almost 3 years aggressively harassing Jewish students on campus. Whether you agree with his deportation or not, his behavior was abhorrent and he should not be celebrated by the Mayor,” Jewish organization Aish CEO wrote.

One year of Mahmoud Khalil’s ICE arrest

Mahmoud Khalil was picked up by the ICE on March 8 last year from inside the Columbia University campus. He was a leader and negotiator of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. While the federal administration tried to deport him, he was released from detention by a court order. “It has now been one full year. One year since that dreadful night that marked the beginning of a brutal wave of arrests targeting protesters for nothing more than speaking the truth. Though we have never met in person, I have carried you with me every single day since Noor called me while I was detained in Jena, Louisiana, to tell me that you had been taken. I remember thinking: not again, not another one of us. From that moment, a piece of my heart has been tied to your struggle,” Khalil wrote for The Guardian on the one-year anniversary of his detention.“I am free, but I am not free. I carry that detention center in Jena with me. I carry my fellow detainees – Alex, Ziyad, Marcel, Juan and Mamuki – with me. I carry the cold and the fluorescent light. I carry the night they came for me and the night I walked out and every night in between. And I carry the knowledge that while I am here, others are still there. That my freedom is partial as long as anyone remains caged for the same reasons I was caged,” Khalil wrote.