Zohran Mamdani, mayoral candidate who confronted Trump border czar, flooded with racist abuse and threats

It’s a cycle that’s become all too common in modern politics: An outspoken politician of color uses their voice to speak up and is then flooded with racist abuse, harassment and death threats.

On Wednesday, Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani attempted to confront President Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan during his visit to the state Capitol. Video of the encounter between Mamdani, who is running for New York City mayor, and Homan has since gone viral, making the rounds on conservative media and driving charged discourse online. 

In response, Mamdani has faced a deluge of threats and hate speech, which have inundated his office’s phone lines, inboxes and social media accounts – shaking up his staff and prompting him to temporarily disconnect the phones in both his Albany and district offices. Many callers have attacked Mamdani’s identity; he is a Muslim who was born in Uganda to parents from India. 

Mamdani's office shared transcripts of some of the voicemails it has received with City & State.

“Burn in hell, die quick, but I am happy you support the First Amendment so I can say these things to you, cocksucker,” one caller said. 

“Get the hell out of politics. You are supposed to be an educated person but you are an unhinged Muslim whacko and we would like to get you out of office and we will,” another said.

A third voicemail called Mamdani a “sand n-----,” among other epithets.

The social media response to Mamdani was even more vitriolic, with a number of tweets threatening Mamdani with “the rope” or “a rope and a tree” – a thinly-veiled reference to lynching that’s associated with white supremacists.

In an interview with City & State, Mamdani said that he is no stranger to death threats, comparing the situation to when he criticized former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes. But he described the reaction to his confrontation as being “on another level.” 

“It is, sadly, a reality of our politics today, and I think it is also a reflection of Trump's inability to deliver for the working class. Prices are going up, the economy is in chaos,” Mamdani said. “The only promise he will keep is punishing his perceived enemies. When you have nothing material to offer, cruelty becomes the only thing you can deliver, and yesterday was just one example of that.”

Mamdani is a democratic socialist in his third term in the state Assembly representing Astoria and parts of Long Island City in Queens. He’s also in the thick of a jam-packed Democratic primary for New York City mayor. Known for his unapologetically leftist politics and his outspoken support of Palestinian rights and criticism of Israel, Mamdani is a frequent presence at protests and has participated in hunger strikes twice – once outside City Hall in support of striking taxi drivers and once outside the White House in protest of the war in Gaza. 

Homan’s visit to Albany came days after agents with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security detained Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and recent Columbia University graduate still living in Columbia-owned housing who had helped lead pro-Palestinian protests at the university. 

The arrest and attempted deportation of Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the U.S. with a green card, on the basis of his activism has struck a particular nerve – not just for socialists and pro-Palestinian activists, but for many other Americans who see the move as a circumvention on the First Amendment. More than 40 elected officials representing New York, including Mamdani, later sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security demanding Khalil’s release.

Speaking alongside Republican state legislators in Albany on Wednesday, Homan questioned the breadth of the First Amendment while arguing that Khalil’s activities while advocating for Palestine went too far. 

“When you go on a college campus and you wanna start protesting, and locking down and taking over buildings, and damaging property, and handing out leaflets for Hamas – who is a terrorist organization – coming to this country either on a visa or becoming a resident alien is a great privilege, but there are rules associated with that,” Homan told reporters. “You might have been able to get away with that stuff in the last administration, but you won’t under this administration.”

Mamdani and several other lawmakers as well as advocates were waiting in the hallway to question Homan as he left the room. “How many New Yorkers will you detain?” Mamdani shouted at Homan as state troopers pushed him back. “How many New Yorkers without charge? Do you believe in the First Amendment?” Homan, who was eating an apple at the time, did not answer.

Border Czar Tom Homan gets a warm reception at the state Capitol. pic.twitter.com/5XT6bSDvkn

— Austin Jefferson (@AJeffNY) March 12, 2025

“I wanted to ask Tom Homan to his face whether he actually believes in our constitutional right to free speech,” Mamdani told City & State. “We need to stand up to these authoritarians.”

Death threats and the lobbing of racial epithets have become normalized in the current politically polarized environment. Former Rep. Jamaal Bowman, an outspoken progressive, and his office received countless threats toward the end of his tenure in Congress. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the most prominent progressive politician in the country, has also regularly received death threats, and one of the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, had publicly called for her assassination. 

Mamdani said that the onus shouldn’t be on politicians or members of marginalized communities to call out this behavior, and the public at large needs to call this hateful harassment whenever they see it.

“Taking on Islamophobia is less the work of Muslim elected officials than of others, because so often, when you are standing up and yelling a slur at someone, or you're typing it into a tweet and you're sending it in an email, you're shouting it over the phone, you're doing so because you believe that there is a division between us and them,” he said. “And the ‘them’ in this case being a Muslim immigrant and a democratic socialist, and what's critically important is for that person to hear and see others that they see themselves in telling them that this is unacceptable.”