Actress Ellen Barkin called to burn ICE after agents shot an illegal migrant who rammed officers in the Bronx, as Mayor Mamdani demanded abolition.
Ellen Barkin posted a blunt demand on X on Friday after federal agents wounded Oscar Belgal during an enforcement action in New York City’s Bronx. The Breitbart report showed the actress answering a reporter’s note about the shooting with four words aimed straight at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Barkin wrote:
"Burn ICE to the ground"
The same day, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called for ICE to be “abolished.” DHS officials refused to back down, saying the migrant had driven at officers and put a child at risk. The clash puts celebrity rage and sanctuary politics against agents trying to take a suspected gang member off the street.
Federal officials described a targeted arrest attempt that turned violent in seconds. ICE officers moved to take Belgal into custody. He responded by using his vehicle as a weapon.
The New York Post reported ICE’s account of what happened next. Marcos Charles of ICE said Belgal smashed into government vehicles and kept coming.
Charles stated:
"He then accelerated his vehicle, smashing into two of our government ICE vehicles and then weaponized his vehicle and proceeded to accelerate, going towards other officers."
Officers opened fire. Belgal took a non-life-threatening graze wound to the neck. Agents treated the injury as self-defense after he drove at them. He was later taken into federal custody.
Charles also said the agents acted on training and an immediate threat.
"The officers, using their training and believing that their lives, the lives of their partners and the general public were in danger, fired their weapons."
A young child was inside the vehicle during the confrontation. The Washington Examiner reported Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s account that Belgal, an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic, had a 5-year-old with him when he tried to escape.
Belgal was not a first-time offender unknown to authorities. DHS described him as a suspected Trinitarios gang member under investigation for gang activity. His record included grand larceny, theft, robbery, and armed offenses. Officials also pointed to a pending detainer and possible ties to a prior shooting of a Customs and Border Protection agent.
New York’s limited cooperation on detainers left federal officers to make the arrest themselves. That is the environment Mullin blamed for putting both agents and the public in danger. He said sanctuary rules help criminal activity thrive and leave American citizens less safe.
Mullin told reporters the migrant’s choices endangered his own child as well as the officers. He framed the case as part of a wider push under President Trump to restore law and order even when local politicians resist.
Related street unrest and political blowback after the Bronx shooting have already drawn coverage of clashes tied to the ICE arrest attempt in the same neighborhood.
Mayor Mamdani answered the shooting by calling for ICE to be “abolished.” Mullin labeled that rhetoric dangerous and said it would incite hostility toward the very officers sent to remove criminal illegal immigrants.
Mullin said:
"I want to make it very clear, sanctuary politicians, they create an environment for criminal activity to thrive."
He continued that sanctuary cities and sanctuary politicians endanger public safety and put criminals ahead of law-abiding citizens. He made plain that DHS will not pause efforts to take criminal migrants into custody for deportation.
Mamdani’s demand fits a larger pattern of hard-line attacks on enforcement. Readers have already seen him press for ICE abolition after the Bronx shooting in nearly identical terms.
The mayor’s record on other flashpoint issues has likewise drawn fire, including his refusal to retreat from sweeping claims about Israel. Party leaders have often stayed quiet while the controversy built.
That silence has been noted in coverage of how Schumer and Jeffries handled internal Democratic criticism of his earlier remarks.
Friday’s “burn ICE” message was not Barkin’s first attack on immigration enforcement. Last November she claimed there is “no difference” between ICE officers and Nazis. Months earlier she reacted to then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s hospital trip by calling her a c***. She also claimed assassination attempts against President Trump were “faked.”
Those statements cast federal officers as monsters and treat political violence as theater. They land hardest on the people who actually face vehicles used as weapons in places like the Bronx.
Further disorder followed the shooting itself, with local reports detailing how Bronx clashes erupted after the ICE agent wounded the wanted illegal immigrant during the arrest.
Hollywood applause for destroying ICE does not change the facts on the ground. Belgal drove at officers. A child sat in the car. Agents fired to stop the threat. The migrant survived a graze wound and entered federal custody. The mayor and a well-known actress answered with calls to erase the agency that made the arrest.
Taxpayers and lawful residents still need someone willing to take criminal illegal immigrants off the street when local leaders will not.
