New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Thursday he secured the release of a Columbia University student detained by federal immigration agents and pitched a plan to build at least 12,000 new housing units during a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House.
Mamdani’s unannounced trip to Washington, his second in-person meeting with Trump since being elected in November, was not listed on his public schedule and was disclosed by his staff only after he was en route.
During the Oval Office meeting, Mamdani raised concerns about the detention of Elmina “Ellie” Aghayeva, a Columbia student taken into custody earlier in the day at her campus apartment by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Shortly after the mayor left the White House, Trump called to say she would be released “imminently,” Mamdani wrote on X.
Mamdani spokeswoman Anna Bahr said the mayor also handed Trump and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles a list of four other detained students and expressed his desire for their release.
In addition, Mamdani presented Trump with a proposal for the federal government to help finance the construction of at least 12,000 new housing units in New York City, describing it as potentially one of the largest federal housing investments in the city in decades.
To underscore the pitch, Mamdani’s team produced a mock front page of the New York Daily News. The fabricated headline, modeled after a 1975 edition that read “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” declared: “Trump to City: Let’s Build,” with the subheadline, “Backs New Era of Housing.”
Mamdani posted a photo from the Oval Office showing Trump smiling and holding both the original 1975 front page and the mock version.
“I had a productive meeting with President Trump this afternoon,” Mamdani wrote on X. “I’m looking forward to building more housing in New York City.”
Bahr said Trump was “enthusiastic” about the housing proposal. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The meeting highlighted an unlikely working relationship between Mamdani, a young democratic socialist who took office last month on an affordability platform, and Trump, a 79-year-old Republican who built his public profile as a New York real estate developer.
The two first met in November, surprising observers with what aides described as a cordial exchange. Despite sharp rhetoric during the campaign, including Mamdani’s remark in August that his administration would be “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare,” and Trump’s social media criticism of Mamdani’s appearance and intelligence, the two have continued to communicate and have signaled a willingness to cooperate on issues such as housing and affordability.
Thursday’s meeting appeared to extend that dynamic, combining policy discussion with a tangible outcome on an immigration case raised by the mayor.