US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Friday attacked New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani who wants federal immigration police (ICE) to leave the city after an officer shot and injured a man.
“His comments are dangerous and incite hostility,” the Republican commented during a press conference during which he defended ICE’s action. Mr. Mullin said the 28-year-old man injured during a raid in the Bronx Thursday afternoon had a serious criminal history and was trying to evade arrest.
Oscar Belgal, who was hospitalized for a superficial neck injury, “came to this country legally a few years ago, and since then (…), he has committed crime after crime,” added the minister. He also said ICE agents did not know a 5-year-old child was in the car alongside him when they opened fire. He was not injured.
Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned this operation and announced that he would ask President Donald Trump, with whom he displays surprising good understanding, to suspend ICE’s actions in New York. “Let’s abolish ICE,” he concluded in a message published on X.
“Refusal to comply”
“Mr. Mayor, if you abolish ICE, who is going to take criminals off the streets of your city?” Mr. Mullin retorted. “Who is going to deal with the murderers, thieves and gang members?”
During this press conference, Marcos Charles, an ICE official, affirmed that Oscar Belgal had “refused to comply with regulatory orders to get out of his vehicle”. “He then accelerated, hitting two of our official vehicles, then used his vehicle as a weapon by continuing to accelerate towards other officers,” he described. “Our officers, relying on their training and believing that their lives, those of their colleagues and the public were in danger, did what they were trained to do and opened fire,” Charles added.
The New York Police (NYPD) for its part posted on X a video of more than 3 minutes of the intervention of its agents after the shootings. We see them taking care of a man injured in the neck and handcuffed by armed men in civilian clothes, then taking him to hospital.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the scene of the shooting Thursday to protest the Trump administration’s repressive immigration policies. Several other interventions by federal agents have sparked outrage this year, notably after the shooting deaths of two American citizens in Minneapolis.
