It matters that the newly elected Mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, is an immigrant.

Not just for symbolic or sentimental reasons, although those are nice. It's fitting that the city of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty would put an immigrant in charge. As Mamdani put it in his Election Night victory speech, New York is "built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant."

Key word: Powered.

Mamdani's victory matters because of the colossal, catastrophic war on immigrants being waged by the world's most powerful man. From the beginning of President Donald Trump's second term, his administration has led a vicious, increasingly violent campaign against the foreign-born, especially in the states and cities led by Democrats and dominated by people of color.

Mamdan delivered. He defied the corporate establishment and billionaires' attack ads and galvanized a winning coalition–young, hopeful, restive, sick of the politics of stifled ambition, of dreaming small, of being resigned to an ever-higher cost of living.

And for all that time, immigrants have been seen as victims, pawns, prey—as bystanders to their own oppression. In recent years, newly arrived migrants have been rounded up at the border, bused across the country by Republican governors, dumped in shelters in Democrat-led cities. Under Trump, all immigrants, new or not, undocumented or not, have been endlessly vilified and slandered as gang killers, rapists, terrorists, job stealers, culture destroyers, eaters of cats and dogs.

And for months the administration has sent masked goons in battle armor to catch them all. They swarm immigrant neighborhoods in unmarked vans to bag their daily quota of deportees. Raids have brought chaos and terror to Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and to cities and suburbs between. The immigration-imprisonment archipelago is vast and growing.

If you believe the administration's threats, the anti-immigrant assault will likely get worse very soon in New York, Trump's hometown. And so it matters that an immigrant, Mayor Mamdani, will be there to oppose him.

Mamdani also said this in his victory address: "So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us."

Those are the words of a leader with the means and will to fight. It's about time. Scorned by MAGAs and pitied by liberals, immigrant communities have battled on their own to protect themselves, tell their own stories, to shape their own destinies, all the while defending bedrock rights for all of us. And while their efforts have been heroic—defending constitutional values for everyone—they have been insufficient to stop or even slow Trump’s torrential abuses of power.

Mamdani's victory goes a long way to turning the tide. It's hard to overstate the shock of a young state assemblyman, an immigrant with no money and no recognition, running a successful grassroots campaign in a crowded race against, among others, an incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, and a former governor, Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo entered the race with a vast lead in the polls and tons of money. He was the candidate to beat, even though he had resigned, disgraced, as governor. He was well known as a bully, a sex pest, and a bumbler—accused of sexually harassment by several women who worked for him and credibly blamed for recklessly sending senior citizens to their Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes. His closing argument was to parrot........

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