Trump administration rebuffs Mamdani’s demand for ICE enforcement freeze after shooting

Por Chris Sommerfeldt and Joe Anuta — POLITICO – TOP Stories

NEW YORK — A broad daylight shooting by federal immigration officers in New York City is putting the Mamdani-Trump bromance to the test.

Hours after masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents peppered a car containing a five-year-old boy with bullets, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he’d spoken with President Donald Trump to demand an end to ICE operations in the city and the release of a 28-year-old man who was shot in the neck.

Neither has happened. That left the mayor facing uncomfortable questions Friday about the utility of his Trump charm offensive and a rift with allies on the left who clashed with the NYPD during a chaotic protest in the residential neighborhood where the shooting took place.

“We’re not putting a pause on enforcement,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said during a Friday press conference, where he railed against the mayor at length. “It’s shameful that you have a mayor that goes out there and puts criminals over law-abiding citizens.”

Immediately after Mamdani won last year’s general election, the conventional wisdom in New York City political circles was that the democratic socialist and the president would inevitably and epically clash over immigration enforcement. But before Mamdani took office, he traveled to the White House for a surprisingly chummy meeting with the president. At the time, the move was broadly interpreted as the mayor’s attempt at avoiding the fate of Minneapolis, which descended into chaos after immigration agents surged into the city and clashed with residents. Amid the enforcement surge, federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens.

Mamdani followed his Oval Office meeting with two more, one at the White House in February, and another at the mayor’s home last month, where they praised each other in a press conference on the lawn of Gracie Mansion. Despite publicly tarring Trump as a fascist, Mamdani’s nice-guy routine with the president so far appears to have helped avoid the sort of federal funding cuts and large-scale ICE deployments the commander-in-chief has subjected other Democratic cities to.

But behind the scenes, ICE has quietly ratcheted up its enforcement in the Big Apple.

Over the past 18 months, agents have nabbed thousands of people in tailored arrests that have been harder to track than show-of-force raids like the ones in Minnesota, according to a recent Gothamist report. And for the mayor, that dramatic spike exemplifies not only the limits of his strategy, but the larger uncomfortable truth that, as a city executive at the whim of the federal government, there is little he can do to stop ICE from going even further.

“I’m glad he tried to negotiate the release of the individual, but as we saw, his relationship has its limitations — and he knows that — and it won’t always result in the outcome that we want, which is why we as New Yorkers have to make ourselves loud and clear as [Trump’s] home state and take to the streets,” Brian Romero, a democratic socialist who won a Democratic primary for state Assembly this summer, told POLITICO. “Our response must be so strong that last night was the last time an ICE agent shoots at a New Yorker.”

As of late Friday afternoon, Trump had not himself commented on the shooting in New York.

At around 4 p.m. Thursday, an unknown number of ICE agents, some masked, approached a car parked in Marble Hill, a small neighborhood of apartment buildings, row houses and single-family homes that, while legally a part of Manhattan, is physically located on the Bronx mainland.

As Mamdani and his police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, would recount at a press conference later that night, the agents were dressed in plainclothes — one was wearing a construction vest — and visibly armed, with one carrying a rifle.

NYPD camera footage showed agents approaching the vehicle with guns drawn before the car moved forward and out of frame, according to Tisch. Ballistic evidence collected at the scene showed at least one officer discharged seven rounds, she said.

“Residents have no idea if these are law enforcement agents or if they are simply attacking someone on the street,” Mamdani said. “And when it comes to ICE, it begs the question: What’s the difference? There is no explanation for this.”

Mullin acknowledged that the agents were in plainclothes, but said they identified themselves and gave “lawful orders” to the man, Oscar Belgal. He alleged Belgal refused the orders and tried to ram his car into one of the ICE agents’ vehicles before shots rang out.

According to Tisch, NYPD officers responded to multiple 911 calls and the sound of gunshots at the scene.

Body camera footage released Friday by the NYPD shows police officers arriving to find Belgal, whom ICE agents were seeking to arrest, sitting handcuffed on the ground with a gunshot wound to the neck. Neighbors were already on site and hurling insults at federal immigration officials. Officers quickly loaded Belgal into a squad car and drove him to New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital where he was listed in stable condition. The child, believed to be his son, according to Tisch, was unharmed.

“For the past two hours, I have been on the phone with President Trump and Secretary Mullin negotiating the release of the man ICE agents shot. Those negotiations were unsuccessful,” Mamdani said late Thursday night. “Let me say this plainly: What happened today was an outrage.”

Mamdani, who repeated his call to abolish ICE, said he had also requested the agency cease operating in New York City.

According to a person with knowledge of the late-night conversations, Mamdani told Trump and Mullin the NYPD could handle the Belgal investigation, but that the city could not detain him since there’s no open criminal arrest warrant and doing so would violate local sanctuary laws. The person, who was granted anonymity to discuss the private calls, said Trump and Mullin rejected the offer and that federal authorities then moved Belgal out of state.

In his press conference, Mullin said Belgal is an unauthorized immigrant from the Dominican Republic with prior arrests for assault, robbery and drug possession as well as “associations” with the Trinitarios street gang. According to the NYPD, Belgal has been arrested twice in New York City, once on a robbery charge in 2023 to which he pleaded guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny and received five years’ probation, and again in 2025 for the criminal sale of a controlled substance. That case is still pending.

Mullin also told reporters the agents involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation, but made clear that the Trump administration is not entertaining the idea of scaling back ICE operations in New York, let alone abolishing the agency. And even though he praised the NYPD as the “finest” officers in the country, he suggested they aren’t capable of dealing with crime in New York alone (the NYPD recently announced broad declines in major crime categories so far this year and the fewest shootings and murders in New York City history).

“Well, mayor, If you abolish ICE, who’s going to take criminals off the streets of your own town?” he said.

The reaction from Mullins’ foes was similarly explosive and swift.

The Legal Aid Society, which represents Belgal, argued the ICE agents who opened fire on him are the real criminals and urged the Manhattan district attorney to explore charges against them.

“We call on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to pursue accountability with the same resolve demonstrated by prosecutors in Minneapolis in cases involving federal immigration agents,” the group said in a statement. “The law must apply equally to everyone, and no one should be above it.”

Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist who’s expected to win the congressional seat representing Marble Hill, blasted agents for recklessly opening fire in a dense neighborhood.

“This was in the middle of the afternoon, with children walking home from school and people heading home from work,” she said in a statement. “Federal agents put every one of them in danger.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fellow democratic socialist, called for an independent investigation into the shooting and took a shot at the Target Corporation, saying the retailer has provided “private staging sites” for ICE in the Bronx.

“Target opening up large, active retail parking lots for paramilitary activity is unacceptable and places the entire community at risk,” she said.

A spokesperson for Target said the company has no agreement with ICE or any other federal law enforcement agency to use store properties as staging grounds. The spokesperson also noted the firm cannot interfere with law enforcement operations.

Some ire in New York City, however, was directed back at Mamdani.

As he and Tisch showed up near the scene of the shooting late Thursday night for a press briefing, a crowd of protesters shouted “Mamdani is complicit” at him.

They appeared to refer to the NYPD’s response to the anti-ICE demonstrators who quickly descended on the area after the shooting for what became a chaotic rally. During the tumult, Avila Chevalier was shoved to the ground by officers, video shows.

“Last night, the NYPD and Commissioner Tisch violated the spirit, if not the letter, of our sanctuary city policies and fueled the Trump administration’s attempt to demonize our communities,” Avila Chevalier said in a statement.

Avila Chevalier has said she is opposed to all deportations. In since-deleted social media posts from several years ago, she also called to abolish borders, a stance she has said does not represent her current thinking.

Her missive notably omitted any mention of Mamdani by name, but it nonetheless ramped up pressure on him to make good on his promise to disband the Strategic Response Group, a specialized unit whose members have racked up a disproportionately large number of misconduct complaints. That unit, however, was not on site Thursday night, according to an NYPD spokesperson.

Avila Chevalier’s statement also put the additional burden on Mamdani of reining in Tisch, who’s more politically moderate than the mayor and was first appointed by former Mayor Eric Adams, a conservative Democrat.

It remains to be seen how much blowback Mamdani will ultimately face for maintaining a friendly rapport with Trump in the wake of Thursday’s shooting.

Grace Mausser, a co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter and a close ally of the mayor, suggested there isn’t actually a need for him to change his strategy, as the city still needs the federal government’s help on a variety of matters, including housing funding.

“It’s difficult to say that the relationship needs to change, but I have a lot of respect for the fact that the mayor has been clear even in some press conferences that look friendly that he thinks Trump is a fascist,” she said. “And I’m very hopeful that there will be a change in federal administration in the next election.”

Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories