Photo: AP Photo/Adam Gray
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Saturday that after speaking with President Donald Trump, the president agreed to grant a visa to the mother of a 15-year-old immigrant from Ghana who was shot and killed in the Bronx earlier this week, the Associated Press reports. The White House did not immediately respond to an AP email seeking confirmation that the administration would issue the visa.
According to New York City police, the teen, Javits Frimpong, was on his way to school in a Bronx neighborhood shortly before 9:30 a.m. Thursday when he was shot in the abdomen. He was pronounced dead at a hospital later that day. No arrests have been made, and the killing remains under investigation.
“The murder of a child is a pain no parent should have to endure, let alone from thousands of miles away,” Mamdani wrote on X. He said Frimpong’s mother “deserves to say goodbye to her son in person,” and that Trump had agreed to grant her visa “immediately.” “All of New York City is mourning this tragedy,” Mamdani said.
Frimpong had arrived in the Bronx from Ghana a year ago to be with his father and start a new life in the United States, according to U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat. “Our entire borough is mourning a young man who should have had his whole future ahead of him,” Torres said, adding that every child in the Bronx “deserves to walk to school without fearing for their life.”
Ghana’s Foreign Minister Sam Okudzeto Ablakwa said on X that Ghanaian officials in New York are coordinating with local authorities and that the foreign ministry “will work tirelessly with U.S. authorities to ensure justice is secured.”
The AP noted that Trump has clamped down on immigration during his second term, including suspending the processing of visas from 75 countries.
