In June 2025, Zohran Mamdani, then still a relatively unknown state lawmaker, made a video calling for the release of Mahmoud Khalil, an activist who had been detained under President Trump’s crackdown for his role in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia.
It was the starting point of a political alliance that appears to have morphed into a friendly rapport between Mr. Mamdani, now the mayor of New York City, and Mr. Khalil, one of more than 600,000 legal green card holders who live in the city.
On Sunday, the two men along with their wives shared an iftar dinner at Gracie Mansion, breaking the daily fast of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, on the first anniversary of Mr. Khalil’s arrest. Mr. Mamdani shared a photo from the dinner on social media on Monday along with a lengthy caption recounting Mr. Khalil’s ordeal.
“For Mahmoud Khalil, this past year has been marked by profound hardship — and by profound courage,” Mr. Mamdani wrote, going on to describe how Mr. Khalil was arrested by federal agents after an iftar dinner and was held for months, missing the birth of his son, Deen.
“All of this for exercising his First Amendment rights in protesting the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” Mr. Mamdani said.
In the photo, Mr. Mamdani appears in the dining room with his back to the camera. He stands at a diagonal to a smiling Mr. Khalil, who sits across from his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, and Deen, in a booster seat. New York’s first lady, Rama Duwaji, hovers over Mr. Khalil with a plate in her hands.
It was not the first time the two men had been together. The pair sat next to each other at a Ramy Youssef comedy show in July, where both were brought up onstage.
Mr. Khalil also attended Mr. Mamdani’s victory party on election night and his inauguration on New Year’s Day, where he told a Spectrum News reporter that Mr. Mamdani had been the first elected official to speak out on his behalf.
“I appreciated that very, very, very highly,” he said, noting that at the time, no Democratic members of New York’s congressional delegation had spoken up for him. “Yet Zohran insisted to go and speak out on my behalf, on behalf of those illegally and unjustly targeted by the administration.”
Beyond their politics, the two men have a lot in common. They are both Muslims and both immigrants who have struggled with their sense of place. Mr. Khalil is an Algerian-Palestinian who was born in Syria, but fled during a government crackdown on dissent in 2013. Mr. Mamdani is an Indian American who was born in Uganda.
And one of Mr. Khalil’s lead attorneys, Ramzi Kassem, is now working for City Hall as chief counsel to the mayor.
But they have received strikingly different treatment from Mr. Trump. Mr. Mamdani has been embraced by the president, while Mr. Khalil remains a target of his administration. Mr. Khalil has been left unable to obtain work and wary of taking his son out alone in fear of being arrested again.
Mr. Mamdani, who has asked President Trump to drop the deportation case against Mr. Khalil, appeared to weigh in again in his caption to the dinner photo: “Mahmoud is a New Yorker, and he belongs in New York City,” he said.
Anna Kelly, a spokeswoman for the White House, expressed the Trump administration’s disapproval in a statement on Tuesday. “No one should be feting the anti-American, pro-terrorist activities of Mahmoud Khalil, who made his name as a ringleader of violent anti-American and antisemitic university protests that harmed American foreign policy interests,” Ms. Kelly said.
Tyrone Stevens, a Democratic political consultant, said the photo was also an opportunity for Mr. Mamdani to remind his supporters where his heart is as he faces headwinds over his push to tax the rich and pressure to endorse other democratic socialist candidates running for office.
“He’s got real constraints as the mayor on what he can actually do to appease his base,” he said. “This is an easy one for him to do as a reminder to folks, particularly his base, where he stands, what he’s up to, what he’s fighting for.”
Murad Awawdeh, a longtime friend of Mr. Mamdani, said the mayor’s appearances with Mr. Khalil reflected his efforts “to be kind to someone who has really gone through horrible things.”
Mr. Awawdeh, the vice president of advocacy at the New York Immigration Coalition, said that reflected Mr. Mamdani’s commitment to fighting for those facing injustice.
On social media, response to the photo appeared to be mixed, and largely fell along partisan lines. Conservatives like those in the Republican Jewish Coalition, a national advocacy group, criticized the mayor for embracing someone accused by federal authorities of sympathizing with extremists.
“In N.Y.C., terrorist sympathizers have a seat at Zohran Mamdani’s table,” the group said in a post on X. “Mahmoud Khalil should be deported, not fluffed by the Mayor of the City of New York. Disgraceful.”
However, Diana Moreno, the democratic socialist who has assumed Mr. Mamdani’s seat representing Queens in the State Assembly, responded approvingly: “My New York City. My neighbor Mahmoud. My mayor Zohran.”
Jonah E. Bromwich contributed reporting.
Ashley Southall writes about cannabis legalization in New York.
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