New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani hosted controversial anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil and his family for a Ramadan meal at Gracie Mansion, drawing renewed attention to the mayor’s public support for the Syrian-born activist, who has been accused by the Trump administration of sympathizing with Hamas.

The gathering took place as Khalil marked a year since his arrest by federal immigration authorities. Mamdani described the dinner in a message posted Monday on social media.

“Last night, as we marked the one year anniversary of his detention, Rama and I were honored to welcome Mahmoud, Noor, and their son Deen to Gracie Mansion to break our fast together,” Mamdani wrote in a Monday Instagram post.

The mayor shared a photo from the evening showing his wife, Rama Duwaji, holding a plate of food beside Khalil, who was seated at the table and smiling as he ate.

Khalil, who was born in Syria and later studied as a graduate student at Columbia University, was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement early last year. The Trump administration has sought to deport him, alleging that he committed fraud on his green card application.

Federal officials have also argued that Khalil supports Hamas and have invoked a little-used provision of immigration law that allows noncitizens to be removed from the country if their views are considered a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests.

Khalil has previously drawn criticism for comments he made about the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre carried out by Hamas against Israeli civilians, describing the attack as an inevitable development connected to the group’s “struggle.”

Despite that controversy, Mamdani praised Khalil in his social media post, portraying the past year of the activist’s life as a period marked by resilience.

For Mamdani, however, Khalil’s year “has been marked by profound hardship—and by profound courage,” he wrote glowingly in his Monday social media post.

“And yet, even in the face of that cruelty, there has also been beauty. New Yorkers raising their voices in solidarity. A city refusing to look away. Mahmoud won his freedom, and a father was finally reunited with his child,” the mayor continued.

Khalil’s son, the couple’s first child, was born while his father remained in ICE detention in another state. The child is expected to celebrate his first birthday on April 21.

“Mahmoud is a New Yorker, and he belongs in New York City,” Hizzoner declared.

Mamdani has repeatedly defended Khalil publicly. The activist spent three months in a federal detention facility in Louisiana before a three-judge appellate panel in New Jersey ruled in June that he should have been allowed to pursue his immigration case while continuing to work.

“I see this attack on him as part of a larger attack on the freedom of speech that is especially pronounced when it comes to the use of that speech to stand up for policy to human rights,” the mayor said at an unrelated press conference in January.

Khalil himself faced backlash late last year after comments he made appeared to justify the Hamas assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. In remarks to The New York Times, he described the attack as a moment of desperation that Palestinians felt compelled to reach in order to be heard.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t avoid such a moment,” he said in an interview with the New York Times when asked about the attack by the terror group.

“To me, it felt frightening that we had to reach this moment in the Palestinian struggle,” Khalil added.

Officials in Washington were among those who sharply criticized those remarks, arguing that they reflected a pattern in which Khalil minimized the brutality of Hamas’ actions.

After being released from custody, Khalil again drew headlines when he attended an anti-Israel demonstration in New York City. At the rally, he cited the words of Anas al-Sharif, described as a Hamas operative and an Al Jazeera correspondent who was killed in an Israeli missile strike last August.

“The time is now, the bridges towards liberation start with us,” Khalil bellowed to the crowd as he recalled al-Sharif’s final words.