New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdanis quiet channel to the White House for ICE detainee releases is in jeopardy now that Stephen Miller has replaced Susie Wiles as chief of staff.
A recent report says Mamdani and his staff have for months asked President Donald Trumps team to free people held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with most of those appeals routed through Wiles. The relationship took shape in February, when Mamdani used a White House meeting to press Trump on Columbia student Elmina Aghayeva, who had been detained that same day and was later released.
Mamdani and his staff later supplied names of about two dozen more immigrant New Yorkers in ICE custody, including a list reportedly delivered at a September Gracie Mansion meeting, according to two people with knowledge of the outreach. Aside from Aghayeva, the report cites a short-term visa for a Ghanaian woman whose son was fatally shot in the Bronx, and it does not confirm that anyone on the later lists has been released.
Over the course of these conversations, we have been able to free a New Yorker from ICE detention, Mamdani has said. We have been able to secure a visa for a grieving mother who would otherwise have to watch her son be buried from thousands of miles away.
Aides now fear Miller will be unlikely to keep playing ball in the same way Wiles did. Ally Murad Awawdeh called Miller a cruel man who has spent his career targeting immigrants, then added that he is not the president and that New York expects the president to work with the mayor, even as Trump reiterated that we have a very strong deportation policy, theres no amnesty.
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