New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani blamed his predecessor after his office released a map of the city omitting key immigrant groups.
The map marking immigrant enclaves across the city omitted historically Irish, Italian, and Jewish areas but depicted other neighborhoods such as “Little Palestine” and “Little Bhod-Tibet.” When asked about the controversy at a press conference Friday, Mamdani blamed the discrepancy on former NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ office. (RELATED: Mamdani’s Immigrant Map Somehow Misses Three Groups That Defined NYC History)
“This map was initially created by the prior administration in 2023, and when we inherited it, we added a few additional neighborhoods,” Mamdani said. “It’s clearly not an exhaustive list of the more than 200 ethnic communities that call our city home, and we’re going to be making additional changes in the future to reflect that.”
“That includes adding ‘Little Italy’ to the map,” Mamdani added.
🚨WATCH: Mamdani says the ADAMS administration created the ethnic enclave map that left out Little Italy.
He says his administration will add Little Italy in a future update. pic.twitter.com/LU4YSHf2Dg
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 10, 2026
Groups that were originally left off the map viewed the controversy less as an unfortunate mistake and more as a deliberate “cultural erasure.”
“This is not a clerical error. This is cultural erasure,” Italian-American Civil Rights League (IACRL) President Mike Crispi said in a press release Wednesday. “Little Italy is sacred ground. It is where Italian immigrants came with nothing, worked like hell, opened shops, raised families, built churches, fed the city, and helped make New York what it is.”
“Mamdani’s City Hall can find room for every fashionable progressive constituency, but somehow it cannot find Little Italy,” Crispi added. “Our culture is good enough for their photo ops, our food is good enough for their fundraisers, and our neighborhoods are good enough for tourism dollars — but when it comes time to recognize Italian Americans, they erase us.”