Trump Officials Clash With Mamdani Over ICE Shooting in NYC

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin defended the shooting of a man by an immigration officer in New York City and pushed back on calls from Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other officials to end immigration enforcement in the city.

The shooting injured the man and occurred in front of a 5-year-old boy, drawing an immediate outcry from New York officials and protesters. President Donald Trump offered to turn the man who was shot over to the New York Police Department, but Mamdani said the city wouldn’t detain him, Mullin said at a news conference on Friday.

“It is shameful that we’re giving this particular case so much attention when this was a thug,” Mullin said, referring to Oscar Belgal, who was taken into custody by ICE agents.

Trump had agreed to release Belgal to the New York Police Department if it wanted to pursue charges against him, Mullin said. He said he relayed the offer to Mamdani, who told him the city would not detain Belgal. The mayor wanted ICE “to walk away and allow this dangerous criminal back onto the streets,” Mullin said.

Mamdani’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Mullin’s assertions. Late Thursday, the mayor said he had urged Trump to halt all ICE enforcement actions in the city after spending two hours on the phone with the president and Mullin in an unsuccessful effort to secure Belgal’s release.

“There is no explanation for federal officers firing this many rounds into a car that has a five-year-old in the car,” Mamdani said. “ICE is rotten to its core.”

Belgal, a 28-year-old Dominican man, has been moved to a detention facility outside New York City because of his criminal history and because he is a flight risk, said Marcos Charles, who leads ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations.

Charles said agents used their vehicles to block Belgal on Thursday afternoon and that he refused orders to get out of his car. Belgal then accelerated, crashed into two ICE vehicles and drove toward other officers, Charles said. Officers fired because they believed “their life and the life of the partners in the general public were in danger,” he said.

At least seven rounds were fired, hitting Belgal in the neck, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Thursday. The 5-year-old child was physically unharmed.

Tisch’s preliminary account partly overlapped with ICE’s. She said one federal officer approached the driver’s-side window with his gun drawn, while another stood near the driver’s-side headlight, before the vehicle moved forward. NYPD cameras didn’t capture the shooting, she said, and an ICE vehicle at the scene had damage to its front left side.

Mullin also blamed New York’s sanctuary policies. “Sanctuary politicians, they create an environment for criminal activity to thrive,” he said. The Trump administration has lodged 14,766 detainer requests with New York since January 2025, he said, asking authorities to hold people in custody so they could be transferred to immigration officials.

Charles said Belgal had been charged in New York with robbery, grand larceny and theft while armed with a deadly weapon. The Department of Homeland Security said Thursday that Belgal was in the US illegally and had ties to the Trinitarios gang, without providing further details. Tisch said Belgal pleaded guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny after a 2023 robbery arrest and has a pending 2025 drug-sale case.

Governor Kathy Hochul said she had also spoken with Trump and Mullin, urging them to halt operations and release body-camera footage.

New York City’s sanctuary policies generally limit cooperation between local authorities and federal immigration officials. City officials have said the rules preserve trust between immigrant communities and local government.

Immigration enforcement has intensified sharply in New York in recent months, mirroring a runup nationwide, according to figures compiled by the Deportation Data Project. ICE made more than 1,500 arrests in the state in July, according to the data.

The shooting adds to a series of incidents in which federal immigration agents have opened fire. Several have been fatal, including shootings involving US citizens.