Mamdani demands ICE exit after agents shoot wanted man
By The Conservative Desk (/journals/conservative-desk)
Federal immigration agents surrounded Oscar Belgal’s vehicle in Marble Hill on Thursday afternoon and fired seven rounds into the car. A 5-year-old boy sat in the backseat. Belgal, 28, was struck in the neck below his left ear. The child was reported unharmed.
The shooting happened around 4 p.m. in the residential northern Manhattan neighborhood. Belgal was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital in stable condition and later placed in ICE custody. New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the NYPD had no involvement in the federal operation and that no city officers were on scene when the shots were fired. Based on evidence at the scene, she said, at least one ICE agent discharged the seven rounds.
Department of Homeland Security officials said agents were trying to arrest Belgal over a prior grand-larceny conviction and other arrests. City records show he was arrested Dec. 7, 2023, on robbery charges, pleaded guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny, and received five years’ probation. He also faced a pending 2025 arrest for criminal sale of a controlled substance. DHS alleged additional prior arrests for assault, robbery, drug possession, and weapons possession, and alleged ties to the Trinitarios gang. The agency described him as an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic.
In a statement posted on X, DHS defended the operation and blamed sanctuary policies for putting officers and the public at risk. “When dangerous illegal aliens are released back onto the streets by radical sanctuary politicians, our officers are forced to make arrests at large in the community in unpredictable and dangerous environments,” the department said. “Our officers should not have to risk their lives, and innocent Americans should not have to face unnecessary danger, because sanctuary politicians refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement.” DHS said officers rendered aid, that Belgal was alive at a local hospital, and that the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations were on scene. The incident remained under investigation.
That release after the 2023 case is the fact the city’s political response largely set aside. Mayor Zohran Mamdani held a late-night press conference in Marble Hill near the shooting scene, flanked by elected officials, and took only two questions. He said he had spoken with President Donald Trump and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin for about two hours trying to secure Belgal’s release. The effort failed. As of 11:30 p.m., Belgal remained in ICE custody.
“This city wants ICE out. We want ICE out of our city, ICE out of our schools, ICE out of our hospitals, ICE out of our streets, ICE away from our kids,” Mamdani said. “We want that because we want to keep the city safe. We do not need them to do so – all they do is terrorize the city.” He said the agents “wore construction vests and masks that concealed their faces” and that “there was no reasonable way to identify them as ICE agents.” He added: “There is no explanation for these tactics. There is no explanation for federal officers firing this many rounds into a car that has a 5-year-old. There is no explanation. We are standing here, so close to the site of where this actually took place, and look at how many people live right here.”
Mamdani called the shooting confirmation that ICE “operates with impunity,” that agents “sow chaos and terror across our country,” and that they “have killed far more of our neighbors than they could ever have claimed to save.” His conclusion was categorical: “This is an agency that must be abolished.” He called Thursday’s events a “microcosm of what ICE does on a daily basis across this country.” City & State, citing the New York Times, reported that at least two dozen people have been shot by ICE agents nationwide since Trump took office in January 2025, with six killed.
The mayor’s case, stated in his own terms, is that federal immigration enforcement itself endangers New Yorkers and that safety requires removing ICE from the city entirely. Governor Kathy Hochul said she also spoke with Trump and Mullin, expressed outrage on behalf of New Yorkers, urged a halt to ICE enforcement operations in New York, and asked that any body-camera footage of the shooting be released so the public could establish the facts.
Those demands run directly against the legal structure Congress built for immigration enforcement. ICE is the federal agency charged with locating and removing people who are unlawfully present or who have been ordered removed, including those with criminal convictions. When local sanctuary rules limit cooperation, agents do not stop enforcing federal law; they make arrests in public spaces where outcomes are harder to control. DHS put that point on the record after the shooting. Belgal’s grand-larceny conviction, probation status, pending drug case, and the additional arrests and gang ties DHS alleged are the concrete reasons federal officers were looking for him, not an abstraction about borders.
Public safety and sovereignty meet at that warrant. A city that releases a man after a felony plea and then treats the later federal arrest as an outrage is not restraining government; it is selecting which laws apply. Faith and family enter the picture through the child in the backseat: the boy was unharmed, yet he was present because an adult with an active enforcement target was driving him through a residential street when agents closed in. The ordinary New Yorker the coverage largely skipped is the neighbor who expects robbery and drug cases to mean consequences, and who expects the federal government to be able to make an arrest without first securing a mayor’s permission.
Earlier in the evening, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, Democratic congressional nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier, City Council Member Carmen De La Rosa, and New York Immigration Coalition President and CEO Murad Awawdeh held a press conference near the same location. By nightfall hundreds of protesters had gathered outside the hospital, chanting slogans including “ICE off our streets.” Protesters and NYPD officers shoved one another; demonstrators threw water bottles; police made some arrests. Outside Mamdani’s own press conference, a smaller group chanted, “No ICE, no KKK, no fascist USA.”
Tisch’s department, which had no officers on scene for the shooting itself, was left managing the aftermath in the streets. The full on-scene sequence, any body-camera video, and the final status of DHS’s allegations about the agent’s other arrests were still unresolved in the public record. What was resolved was custody. Belgal left the hospital in ICE hands. The 5-year-old was reported unharmed. Mamdani’s two-hour call with Trump and Mullin did not change either fact.
Seven rounds went into a car carrying a convicted man and a small child on a Thursday afternoon in Marble Hill. Belgal remained in federal custody overnight.