Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville is calling Mayor Zohran Mamdani a “thug” who should be jailed at Guantanamo Bay because he “hates this country.”

The staunch supporter of President Donald Trump predicted the popular mayor would cross some unspecified line that would lead authorities to arrest him and send him to the U.S. military base that mostly functions as a camp for the indefinite detention without charge of foreign terror suspects.

“Sooner or later he will do something more stupid than what he’s done to where we’ll finally say, ‘Enough’s enough,’ go putting handcuffs on him and get him the hell out of here and send him to Gitmo,” Tuberville, R-Alabama, told far right-wing media figure Benny Johnson.

“The guy hates this country, he wants to change it,” Tuberville added. “We’re not going to allow a thug like this to change it and take us into another direction.”

City Hall did not immediately comment on the incendiary interview.

Tuberville, a one-term lawmaker and former Auburn University football coach, is running for governor of Alabama.

He didn’t cite anything specific that Mamdani might do that could trigger the mayor’s arrest or detention without charge. Unlike most Gitmo detainees, Mamdani is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in the East African nation of Uganda.

Mamdani has drawn intense criticism for threatening to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the subject of a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes.

He recently said he had determined the city lacks the authority to make such an arrest, but renewed his call for the federal government to do so.

Hundreds of mostly foreign terror suspects have been detained at Guantanamo Bay since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, mostly because the government either lacked the evidence to charge them in civilian courts or because it says the evidence against them would be too confidential to reveal.

Nearly all have been released or tried in U.S. courts. An estimated 15 suspects remain jailed there.

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