Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani returned to the United States on Wednesday from a week-and-a-half-long trip to his native country of Uganda and was allowed through Customs without any incident, his campaign confirmed to amNewYork.
Mamdani’s decision to leave the U.S. on July 20 to celebrate his marriage to Rama Duwaji with his family in Uganda raised concerns that President Trump’s administration, which has openly flirted with revoking his citizenship, might try to block his re-entry. The democratic socialist’s campaign even prepared for that possibility by keeping regular contact with the offices of Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York Attorney General Letitia James in case Mamdani ran into any issues, New York Magazine reported.
Yet Mamdani was able to re-enter the country without being stopped or detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, his campaign confirmed.
“I did not have issues getting through customs, though I was prepared for the potential of those issues,” Mamdani told reporters later Wednesday. “The is a sad reality of living in our president’s United States.”
Now that Mamdani, a Queens Assembly member, has returned to the Big Apple, he is wasting no time in getting back on the campaign trail nearly a month after winning the Democratic primary by a wide margin.
The Assembly member will hold a 2 p.m. event at the headquarters of 32BJ SEIU, one of the union’s that has endorsed him, to honor the four victims killed by a mass shooter in a Midtown office building earlier this week, his campaign announced. The union’s president, Manny Pastriech, will be there as one of the victims, security guard Aland Etienne, was a 32BJ member.
Mamdani will also be joined by Shamsul Haque, the founder of the Bangladeshi American Police Association, to honor slain Bangladeshi NYPD officer Didarul Islam.
The New York Times reported that soon after arriving back in the city on Wednesday, he met with Islam’s family at their home in the Bronx for roughly an hour, though his campaign has yet to confirm the meeting.
The event comes after Mamdani faced fierce criticism from his opponents, Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, during the past day over his previous support for the “defund the police “ movement. He has since distanced himself from the movement but has floated shifting the NYPD’s responsibilities for responding to those in mental health crises to a new proposed city agency staffed by non-police personnel.
Mamdani has also taken heat over his proposal to eliminate the NYPD unit that responded to the Tuesday shooting incident, known as the Strategic Response Group. In the past, the unit has been heavily criticized for using excessive force on protesters.
Adams slammed Mamdani’s idea to eliminate the unit, which he vowed to do in a December 2024 social media post, during a Wednesday morning CNBC interview.
“When you start dismantling the pieces of the law enforcement apparatus that are specifically designed to carry out functions, that is extremely dangerous,” said Adams, who is running for reelection as an independent. “A lack of knowledge and understanding of these roles really could harm law enforcement.”
Cuomo — who is also running an independent campaign after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani — told Politico on Tuesday that Mamdani’s public safety policies are “abhorrent and wholly disconnected from any responsible government approach.”
The former governor also criticized Mamdani’s absence during the shooting, even though the candidate is not the elected mayor.
