ICE are just trying to enforce our laws. Some don’t want that to be done.
And now Zohran Mamdani just attacked ICE in the most brutal way possible.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has declared war on federal immigration enforcement. In a Sunday interview, days after an ICE officer fired seven shots at a man in Manhattan, the socialist mayor accused the agency of operating as a “rogue federal agency” and demanded that it stop working in his city altogether.
The shooting happened Thursday afternoon in the Marble Hill neighborhood, where ICE agents were trying to apprehend 28-year-old Oscar Belgal, a Dominican national. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at least one federal immigration officer fired seven rounds, striking Belgal in the neck below his left ear. His 5-year-old son, who was sitting inside the vehicle, was unharmed.
That detail, a child in the car, is the reason this incident has drawn so much attention, and no one should minimize it. Any time a firearm is discharged with a child nearby, the public is entitled to a full explanation. The FBI and Homeland Security Investigations are investigating, and a federal judge has already stepped in. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken temporarily blocked Belgal’s deportation while his challenge to federal detention remains pending.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said officers were unaware of the child’s presence. That is a serious factual claim, and it should be tested in the investigation, not simply accepted or dismissed. A thorough, transparent review is in everyone’s interest, including that of the many ICE officers who do dangerous work responsibly.
Mamdani, speaking to MS NOW host Jacob Soboroff in his first interview since the shooting, was not interested in waiting for that review. “We follow the law in New York City and I know that to the secretary, the law is merely a suggestion when it comes to the actions of these ICE agents,” he said. “They are making a mockery of what law and order is.”
He went further. “What we see from their actions is an agency that terrorizes, one that creates a sense of fear as opposed to any idea of safety. And I made it very clear that the longer that ICE agents were engaging in their operations in the city, the less safe this city was becoming,” Mamdani said. His demand was unambiguous: “I am demanding that ICE cease their operations in our city immediately, because these operations make New Yorkers less safe. They leave New Yorkers in a state of terror.”
The mayor said he spoke with President Trump and Secretary Mullin for nearly two hours Thursday evening in an unsuccessful effort to secure Belgal’s release. “What struck me is the secretary did not think that ICE agents had done anything wrong,” he said. In other words, the mayor of America’s largest city spent hours on the phone with the president trying to free a man who, according to DHS, has a prior grand larceny conviction and previous arrests involving assault, robbery, drugs and weapons.
That is the part of the story that Mamdani’s supporters tend to skip. DHS says the target of the operation was not a random bystander. The department says Belgal had a criminal record and was in the country illegally. The mayor can disagree with federal immigration policy, but it is fair for New Yorkers to ask why he is more concerned with the agents than with the criminal record of the person they were attempting to arrest.
The Department of Homeland Security responded sharply. “ICE enforces the law as written. What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is whether or not they are illegally in the U.S. — full stop,” a DHS spokesperson said. “Mayor Mamdani should be thanking our law enforcement for removing these dangerous criminals from his city — NOT vilifying law enforcement.”
The statement continued, “Attacks and demonization of ICE law enforcement is wrong. Because of smears like this our ICE officers are now facing a 1,600% increase in assaults against them as they put their lives on the line to arrest murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members, and terrorists.” That 1,600 percent figure is DHS’s own claim, and readers should treat it as such, but the underlying point about the climate officers face is hard to ignore.
Mullin made the same case at a Friday news conference. “His words are dangerous and incite hostility. It doesn’t help,” Mullin said. “He said that ICE is rotten to the core. Really? Men and women at ICE each day are enforcing the laws that he refuses to enforce. He said he wants to abolish ICE. Well, Mayor, if you abolish ICE, who’s going to take the criminals off the streets of your own town?”
That last question is the one that matters for ordinary New Yorkers. DHS told Fox News Digital that nearly 7,000 criminal illegal immigrants had been released from New York jurisdictions under sanctuary policies. If that figure is accurate, it means local policy has repeatedly put people back on the street whom federal officers then have to track down. Those arrests happen in neighborhoods, near schools and near families, because the city refused to cooperate when the suspects were in custody.
The department also said the administration’s crackdown had resulted in more than 3 million illegal immigrants leaving the United States, including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations. Those are large numbers, and they come from the government, so they should be scrutinized. But they illustrate the scale of the policy fight that Mamdani is wading into with his demand that ICE simply pack up.
There is a coherent argument that can be made without throwing around words like “terror.” You can say that agents should use force only when strictly necessary, that operations should account for the presence of children, and that every shooting deserves an independent review. Many conservatives agree with every word of that. What they do not accept is the idea that an entire federal agency should be declared illegitimate because of one incident still under investigation.
New Yorkers who care about both safety and fairness are left with two demands that are not in conflict. First, insist that the shooting be investigated thoroughly, with the results made public. Second, insist that the city’s leaders stop treating enforcement of federal law as a moral outrage. A mayor who wants the public to trust his judgment about public safety should be at least as concerned about the criminals on the street as he is about the officers trying to remove them.
