New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called for abolishing ICE after agents shot a criminal illegal migrant during a Bronx arrest, and failed to win the man’s release from federal custody.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani staged a late-night press conference Thursday near an anti-ICE protest and declared the agency “rotten to its core,” demanding it “must be abolished,” after federal agents shot Oscar Belgal during an attempted arrest in Marble Hill.
The New York Post reported that Belgal, 28, was struck in the neck, hospitalized in stable condition, then removed by unmarked ICE vehicles, while Mamdani spent two hours on the phone with President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin trying to free him.
Those talks went nowhere. ICE kept custody. Enforcement in New York City continued. And the mayor turned the shooting into a political stage.
Department of Homeland Security officials said ICE had been trying to arrest Belgal and claimed he has ties to the Trinitarios, a Dominican gang founded on Rikers Island in the early 1990s. NYPD records show Belgal already had a 2023 robbery case that ended in a guilty plea to fourth-degree grand larceny and five years’ probation, plus a 2025 criminal sale of a controlled substance case still pending.
The Washington Examiner reported that Mullin defended the ICE officers at a Friday DHS press conference and said Belgal was an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic with an extensive criminal history who attempted to escape when officers approached him with a 5-year-old child in the vehicle.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said NYPD cameras captured plain-clothes federal officers approaching Belgal’s gray Honda CRV as he backed into a parking spot. One officer went to the driver’s window with a gun drawn. Another moved to the driver’s-side headlight. The vehicle then moved forward out of camera view. The shooting itself was not captured on the NYPD cameras.
Tisch said at least one ICE agent fired seven rounds. Belgal was hit in the neck below the left ear. A 5-year-old in the car, believed by police to be Belgal’s son, was unharmed.
NYPD officers responding to a nearby call rushed in after hearing of the shooting. Tisch said they found several men in mixed attire, including construction-style vests and face masks, with at least one carrying a long gun, and the injured man handcuffed on the ground. Officers aided Belgal and took him to NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, where he arrived stable.
"NYPD had no involvement in the federal operation prior to the shooting."
That was Tisch’s line. City police did not run the stop. Federal agents did. City police cleaned up the aftermath.
Mamdani framed the case as federal overreach and public-safety failure. He told reporters he had spent the prior two hours negotiating Belgal’s release.
Just The News reported the mayor’s demand that agents leave the scene and that ICE halt enforcement actions in New York City after the Marble Hill shooting.
"For the past two hours, I’ve been on the phone with President Trump and [DHS] Secretary Mullin negotiating the release of the man ICE agents shot. Those negotiations were unsuccessful."
Mamdani went further.
"Now I made clear to the president, to the secretary, our request [is] that ICE agents leave the scene entirely, as well as the demand that ICE stop its enforcement actions in New York City."
He cast ICE itself as the threat.
"We know, and I have said this directly, whether to the president or to the public, ICE undermines public safety. It makes us less safe."
And he reached for abolition.
"Today’s shooting is only further devastating confirmation of what we have long known, which is that ICE operates with impunity, that they sow chaos and terror across our country, that they have killed far more of our neighbors than they could ever have claimed to save."
He also said there was “no explanation” for federal officers firing that many rounds into a car with a 5-year-old inside, and called the shooting “an outrage.” Moments before the roughly 11:20 p.m. press conference, he said, ICE put Belgal in an unmarked vehicle and removed him from the hospital.
The public facts do not match a simple story of a blameless neighbor caught in federal excess. DHS tied Belgal to the Trinitarios. NYPD confirmed two prior arrests. The 2023 case produced a grand larceny plea and probation. The 2025 drug-sale case was still open. Mullin said the man tried to flee with a child in the car.
Background in the same reporting notes that nearly a dozen Trinitarios members were indicted in July in connection with five murders, context for why federal agents target that network. Mamdani’s answer was not tighter cooperation. It was a demand that ICE leave New York and cease enforcement citywide.
He asked what Trump had to say. The White House and DHS did not hand him the outcome he wanted. Belgal stayed in federal hands. Agents did not abandon the operation on the mayor’s timeline.
Anti-ICE demonstrators gathered near the mayor’s late-night remarks. The political show went on while the suspect, shot, treated, then taken by ICE, left the hospital in federal custody.
City leaders who treat immigration enforcement as the scandal, and a repeatedly arrested illegal migrant with alleged gang ties as the cause, tell taxpayers exactly whose side they are on.
When a mayor’s first move after a federal arrest shooting is to free the target and shut down ICE, law-and-order voters can see the priority list for themselves.
