On the eve of Zohran Mamdani’s election, an assistant commissioner of the Mayor’s Workplace of Immigrant Affairs joined a wave of commenters smearing the younger Muslim candidate as a terror sympathizer.
“Always remember,” learn a meme Erick Salgado posted on his private Fb web page, the phrases superimposed over a photograph of the Twin Towers exploding on Sept. 11, 2001. To the suitable of that, the phrases, “We forgot” have been superimposed over Mamdani’s face.
Under that, Salgado, who’s paid $105,000 a yr to be a liaison to immigrant communities, wrote that “This man should not win with Christian votes,” in keeping with a screenshot of the submit shared with THE CITY.
Salgado didn’t return requests for remark this week concerning the submit, which has apparently been deleted.
A supply acquainted with the state of affairs mentioned MOIA Commissioner Manuel Castro flagged the submit for Metropolis Corridor shortly after the election and beneficial that Salgado be fired. He stays employed.
Requested concerning the remarks, Liz Garcia, a spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams mentioned they, “have been made conscious of the state of affairs and are actively investigating the matter.”
“We condemn this social media submit by a member of MOIA’s employees,” she wrote. “This sort of language undermines our dedication to making sure each New Yorker is handled with respect and dignity, and now we have zero tolerance for hateful rhetoric of any variety.”
Shaina Coronel, a spokesperson for MOIA, the workplace created in 2001 by a referendum, which is meant to assist set coverage for town’s greater than 3 million immigrants mentioned, “Commissioner Castro condemns within the strongest doable phrases the offensive and hurtful social media submit by a member of MOIA’s employees.”
“There ought to completely be no room for Islamophobia in our metropolis and far much less in our metropolis authorities,” These sorts of motion undermines our dedication to make sure that each New Yorker is handled with respect and dignity, with no exceptions.”
Whereas the U.S. Census doesn’t monitor faith, greater than 200,000 overseas born residents who stay in New York Metropolis hail from Muslim majority nations, in keeping with the most recent census estimates.
A spokesperson for Mamdani, who will develop into town’s first Muslim mayor when he takes workplace in January, didn’t return a request for remark immediately.
Salgado, the pastor of the Iglesia Jovenes Cristianos church in Brooklyn who ran a longshot mayoral marketing campaign in 2013, had lengthy crusaded in opposition to homosexual marriage, and his MOIA appointment drew uproar in 2022.
The Fb submit wasn’t the primary time Salgado had posted remarks alluding to Mamdani’s faith. Earlier than Adams dropped out of the race, Salgado urged his Fb followers to help Adams as “a good friend of Christians” and warned that “the enemies of the Church are getting ready to elect an Extremely Socialist Mayor with a religion completely reverse to ours.” These posts nonetheless seem on his Fb feed.
The closing days of the mayoral marketing campaign have been marked by a sequence of claims and smears from Cuomo and his supporters suggesting Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and main candidate, was someway a terror sympathizer.
Adams, Salgado’s boss, waded into that territory when he endorsed Cuomo and mentioned he was doing so, weeks after calling the previous governor “a snake and a liar” partly due to the specter of “Islamic extremism — not Muslims, let’s not combine this up. However these Islamic extremists which might be burning church buildings in Nigeria, which might be destroying communities in Germany.”
Weeks later, Mamdani gained the race to exchange Adams with greater than one million votes — probably the most of any mayoral candidate since 1969.
Murad Awadeh, CEO of New York Immigration Coalition, who opposed Salgado’s preliminary appointment again in 2022 for his anti-LGBTQ views, mentioned Salgado ought to by no means have had a job in metropolis authorities to start out with.
“As a lame duck mayor, Eric Adams additionally peddled in Islamophobia, so it’s no shock that his allies in authorities are doing the identical or really feel emboldened sufficient to exit so far as Erick did,” Awadeh mentioned.
“We stay up for a brand new period in New York Metropolis the place each single New Yorker’s tradition is supported and celebrated.”
