It is a phrase that sounds like it came straight from the playbook of Germany’s AfD or Martin Sellner - and yet it comes from the America of 2025: “Denaturalize. Deport. Remigrate.” What reads like an order from the depths of a police state is a real political demand. Specifically, it is a call from the New York Young Republican Club to President Donald Trump to strip Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani of his citizenship - and deport him. Not because he committed a crime. But because he was elected.
Mamdani, the son of Indian-Ugandan immigrants, moved to Queens at the age of seven and became a naturalized citizen at 27 - and has now defeated longtime former governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary. He stands at the head of a progressive movement that no longer accepts New York City’s social decline as inevitable. With calls for free buses, universal childcare, and a freeze on rent hikes, the 33-year-old has become a beacon for the city’s left - and a lightning rod for the right. That very night, the once-traditional, now radicalized NYYRC posted a “call to action” on X. The wording is militant, the direction unambiguous: Mamdani is a threat to “our beloved city.” Trump should revive the McCarthy-era Communist Control Act, revoke Mamdani’s citizenship - and deport him. That this 1954 law is a constitutional relic never firmly upheld by courts doesn’t seem to bother anyone. On the contrary, Senator Mike Collins is already calling for the return of the House Un-American Activities Committee - the same body that once destroyed careers for supporting union rights or the civil rights movement.
What exactly Mamdani is accused of remains vague. “Socialist, antisemite, communist” - that’s how Republican Congressman Andy Ogles labels him, also mocking him as “little Muhammad” and demanding his deportation. The fact that Mamdani has been a U.S. citizen since 2018 seems to matter just as little as the fact that he has publicly spoken out against antisemitism on multiple occasions. What counts is the image: a nonwhite leftist, Muslim, shaped by immigration - the political archetype of the new Republican enemy. The attacks reach into city government. Vickie Paladini, a Republican councilwoman from Brooklyn, called it “insane” to elect someone who has “not even been a citizen for ten years.” Her conclusion: “Deport.” A spokesperson added that Mamdani had “been involved in extremist organizations during college,” which justifies removing him from the country.
These are the same rhetorical templates Trump, Stephen Miller, and Tom Homan have long used to justify their deportation policies. It is no longer about origin alone - worldview has become grounds for removal. If you’re on the left, you should be “remigrated.” If you want to cut the police budget or freeze rents, you should lose your passport. This is a new dimension of political persecution - wrapped in the language of constitutional defense. Zohran Mamdani responded with clarity. “I was seven when I came to New York. It’s my home. I’m proud to be a citizen - and that also means standing up for our Constitution.” To his opponents, he added: Maybe you should try reading it yourselves. It is this stance that makes him dangerous - not to the country, but to those currently dismantling its democratic foundations. They don’t hate him because he is Muslim - they hate him because his very existence proves that belonging is not a matter of birth but of commitment. And because he reminds us that patriotism doesn’t mean driving people out - but fighting to ensure the country finally belongs to everyone.
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