Courtesy of JNS. Photo credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani hosts a Black History Month reception at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, Feb. 25, 2026
(JNS) —Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, met with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in November in what he called a “productive” meeting and the president said was a “very productive” conversation. The mayor said he had another “productive” meeting with Trump on Feb. 26.
“I had a productive meeting with President Trump this afternoon. I’m looking forward to building more housing in New York City,” he wrote.
He shared a photo of himself standing behind a seated Trump in the Oval Office, holding a mock newspaper with the headline “Trump to City: Let’s Build.” Trump holds a paper that says, “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”
A little over an hour later, Mamdani wrote that he “just got off the phone with President Trump. In our meeting earlier, I shared my concerns about Columbia student Elmina Aghayeva, who was detained by ICE this morning. He has just informed me that she will be released imminently.”
Columbia University stated that it “is relieved and thrilled that our student, Ellie, has been released from detainment.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, stated that she, too, was relieved. “Once again, the White House is being forced to correct its own failures,” she stated. “Entering a student dorm under false pretenses is a gross abuse of power. New York will act to ensure it never happens again.”
Earlier in the day, Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, stated that federal agents entered a Columbia residential building at around 6:30 a.m. and detained a student.
“We are working to gather more information, working to reach the family and providing legal support,” Shipman said. “Our understanding at this time is that the federal agents made misrepresentations to gain entry to the building to search for a ‘missing person.’”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security told The Daily Wire that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Elmina Aghayeva, “an illegal alien from Azerbaijan, at Columbia University after her student visa was terminated in 2016 under the Obama administration for failing to attend classes.”
“The officers were let into her apartment by the building manager and her roommate, DHS said,” according to the publication.
Mamdani said on Thursday that he met with Trump “to propose a historic investment in affordable housing at Sunnyside Yard, home to the busiest rail yard in North America.”
“The proposal represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to confront the city’s housing crisis at the scale it demands,” he said, of the discussion to secure more than $21 billion in federal grants. “If realized, the project would mark the largest housing and infrastructure investment in New York City in more than 50 years.”
The site would include 12,000 new affordable homes and would “create 30,000, good-paying union jobs and deliver new parks, schools and health care clinics,” the mayor said.
“I appreciated the opportunity to speak directly with President Trump about building more housing in any single project than our city has seen since 1973,” he stated. “Both parties agreed to continue discussions in the weeks ahead.”
