Trump’s Threat to Deport Mamdani Isn’t a Joke
New York election now an ominous matter of “national security”
Donald Trump has elevated Zohran Mamdani’s run for mayor to being a matter of national security, and his administration is working to concoct a premise by which he and other naturalized Americans can be stripped of their citizenship.
What applies to Mamdani also applies to Elon Musk, whom Trump has also implied he might deport. But it’s not a mere sideshow in the president’s stream of consciousness.
Last month, according to an internal memo, the Justice Department ordered its attorneys to “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings” — the process by which naturalized Americans can be stripped of their citizenship — not for fraud or criminality, but “against individuals who pose a potential danger to national security.”
It’s a limitless phrase — national security — and it is one that has not been applied to strip someone of their citizenship. It is also not synonymous with terrorism, treason, or even subversion, all causes, according to the feds, to denaturalize and deport individuals. It stands alone, a vague and dangerous phrase that floats above all else.
Denaturalization, while rare, does sometimes happen. But even in cases such as terrorism or the prior commission of war crimes, those involved have their day in court. “National security,” on the other hand, is solely an unchallengeable assertion, one that courts can’t really substantively question (except on some narrow procedural grounds). That’s what makes its weaponization against the American people so appalling.
Small surprise, then, that there’s no precedent for what the administration wants here. Even during the McCarthy era, where anti-communist sentiments led to government investigations, blacklisting, and job dismissals, it did not fundamentally alter the legal framework surrounding citizenship. The presence of Nazi sympathizers in the U.S., World War II, and then the war on communism saw the federal government attempting to broaden (then unheard of) “national security” arguments based on disloyalty and subversive activities.
Now, Trump has invoked the C-word in his remarks on Mamdani.
“I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York,” Trump said of Mamdani this week. “Many people are saying he’s here unlawfully; we will examine everything,” he continued.
“We will have a Communist in the for the first time — really a pure, true Communist,” the president said, again calling him "a 100% Communist Lunatic."
‘Communist’ is a favorite epithet of the right on social media, but it also appeared in a Homeland Security Advisory Committee meeting this week.
In an exchange between Rudy Giuliani (a new committee member) and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the former Mayor of New York and top Trump boot-licker said he’d rather take current mayor Eric Adams over Mamdani.
“I don’t even care if he’s a crook — he’s not a communist,” Rudy said.
“Yeah, he’s not a communist,” Noem replied.
Giuliani continued, stressing how worried he thought President Trump seemed about Mamdani, whom he branded “a combination of an Islamic extremist and a communist.” Giuliani said:
“I saw the president yesterday talking about it, and you could see he was, he was, like, reminding himself of how bad it was when he said, when he said almost like a question and then an answer.
This is the first time we've had a real communist run it. And you could see his face was white. This is the first time we had a real-time —Holy shit — Yeah. The guy's really as bad as it looks, it's not exaggerated. And the old man is like that. Yeah. Really bad. I mean, we got a, somehow we got a combination of an Islamic extremist and a communist.”
Mamdani, for his part, when asked if he was a communist, laughed and said, “I am not.”
There is no doubt in my mind that ultimately the communist smear (and any federal campaign) will only strengthen Mamdani’s attractiveness to his voter base, but it’s still worrying.
On the ideological spectrum from Obama to Trump, the magic wand of national security has been waved to apply to extrajudicial actions (from torture to drone assassinations), but it is also a magic wand used to justify excessive secrecy and squelch any sort of debate about the military or the intelligence establishment. Homeland security similarly is employed by an executive in a similar way, hoping that invoking the phrase suppresses oversight or citizen involvement.
Trump is fond of saying that border enforcement is critical because you either have a country or you don’t. Well, I feel the same way about citizenship. Either you have citizenship or you don’t.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
As the old saying originally went, "First they came for the communists." We all know where it goes from there. It is a true warning, regardless of the fact that Mamdani is not a communist. That didn't stop Roy Cohn and it won't stop Trump. I am also reminded of a bit older saying, something about you have"a republic, if you can keep it." Definitely, past time to start thinking about how to keep it.
Thanks for this important article, Ken.
I voted for Trump to punish my liberal neighbors who make me feel stupid and for more pictures of Hunter’s hawg. Instead my mail order wife got deported and I got laid off from the dick sucking factory. MAGA my fat old ass.