Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) is calling on the Justice Department to investigate NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s citizenship and possibly “denaturalize and deport” him from the United States.
Fine told the New York Post last week that the Trump Justice Department should investigate every naturalization over the previous three decades, starting with Mamdani.
“I just think we need to take a hard look at how these folks became citizens, and if there is any fraud or any violation of the rules we need to denaturalize and deport,” Fine told the Post.
Fine went on to call Mamdani a threat to the nation, adding, “I know that there’s a lot of us that are very, very concerned about the enemy within – people who have come to this country to become citizens, to destroy it.”
Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, was born in Uganda in 1991. His family later immigrated to the United States, and he was raised in New York City. He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 2018.
Fine doubled down in a post on social media Wednesday, calling for similar investigations of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who was born in Somalia and is one of the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress, and progressive commentator Mehdi Hasan.
“We have clearly suffered from massive naturalization fraud,” Fine wrote. “People who swore an oath to America but clearly came to destroy it. It is time to go back and review every naturalization of the past 30 years, starting with Mamdami, Omar, and Hasan and where fraud is found, denaturalize and deport.”
Fine is the second Republican lawmaker to call on the Trump DOJ to investigate Mamdani’s citizenship.
Earlier this year, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) accused Mamdani of lying on his sworn statement when he became a naturalized citizen.
“In 2018 when he was naturalized, he failed to disclose some of the things that he had been doing, one of which was joining the [Democratic] Socialists of America. That’s a communist organization which, quite frankly, at that time, would have disqualified him from becoming a United States citizen,” Ogles said at the time.
