New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that his city does not have a legal right to detain Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after earlier announcing that he was looking into the legality of making such an arrest.
“My administration has reviewed every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether New York City could execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant if Benjamin Netanyahu came here,” Mamdani said in a video shared through a July 21 post on X. “It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant. The federal government, however, does.”
Mamdani called on the Trump administration to comply with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and execute its warrant against Netanyahu.
Both Netanyahu and Gallant denied the claims made by the ICC, with the Israeli prime minister alleging that the court was hijacked by a “rogue prosecutor” who issued the warrants.
In the video, Mamdani accused Netanyahu of being a “war criminal” responsible for the deaths of more than 73,000 people, adding that Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City.
Mamdani recently said in an interview with The New York Times that his office was looking into arresting the Israeli prime minister when he visits the U.N. General Assembly, which is set to hold a session in September.
In a November 2024 statement, the ICC had justified the arrest warrant against Netanyahu, arguing that the Israeli Prime Minister’s alleged conduct “falls within the jurisdiction of the Court.”
The pre-trial chamber found “reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu bears criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, persecution, and other “inhumane acts.” There is also “reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu bears criminal responsibility for the war crime of “intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population,” the statement said.
On July 19 this year, Netanyahu’s office criticized the ICC and Mamdani in a statement on X, calling the ICC a “kangaroo court” with no jurisdiction over American or Israeli citizens.
“Its bogus arrest warrant against Prime Minister Netanyahu was issued by a disgraced former ICC Prosecutor, Karim Khan, a few days before allegations of sexual misconduct against him became public,” the statement said.
In a July 20 post on X, U.S. President Donald Trump said that Netanyahu “will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form” while he is in the United States.
Trump said that Netanyahu was fighting against an Iranian regime that has murdered 52,000 protestors and killed several American soldiers over the past 47 years.
Arresting Netanyahu, Rome Statute
In a July 19 post on X, Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, brushed off Mamdani’s attempts to arrest Netanyahu, saying that such a move “is not going to happen.”
Waltz cited four reasons in support of his view—federal authority trumps the wishes of any local mayor, the head-of-state immunity would apply to Netanyahu, the U.N. Headquarters Agreement grants diplomatic protections to visiting heads of government, and the United States is not a party to the ICC’s Rome Statute.
The Rome Statute is the international treaty that founded the ICC and established the court’s jurisdiction over crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, and crimes of aggression. A total of 125 nations are parties to the Rome Statute.
The United States is in direct conflict with the ICC over the court’s jurisdictional limits. In a February 2025 executive order, Trump said the ICC has no jurisdiction over the United States or Israel “as neither country is party to the Rome Statute or a member of the ICC.”
On July 29, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote a letter to the ICC president, asserting that the U.S. Department of Justice “unequivocally rejects” any claims that the ICC has jurisdiction over Americans.
In a July 13 statement, the office of the State Department’s spokesperson announced the launch of a campaign to “dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court to U.S. sovereignty.”
The campaign is considering calling on nations partnering with U.S. law enforcement or military to reject the ICC’s claimed authority to prosecute Americans. Nations that refuse to reject ICC authority while at the same time relying on U.S. assistance will face increased scrutiny.
The ICC is seeking to become “the unaccountable global arbiter—positioning itself above and beyond the nation state as a supranational enforcement arm of a globalist bureaucracy empowered to persecute American servicemen and officials at will,” the statement said.
“No diplomatic option will be off-limits in the campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the ICC to Americans.”
