Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin charged that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s attacks on ICE after a Bronx shooting amount to dangerous political theater that incites hostility and leaves local officers unsupported.
In a fiery Washington press availability Friday, Mullin tore into Mamdani’s late-Thursday demand to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement and his claim that the agency is “rotten to its core,” tying those words directly to the shooting of a suspected migrant gang member a day earlier in the Bronx.
The clash puts federal immigration enforcement, sanctuary-city politics, and public safety on a collision course in America’s largest city. Mullin said he had already spoken with the mayor for two hours, and that President Trump also spoke with Mamdani and even offered to release the wounded man to NYPD custody, an offer framed against the mayor’s push to get ICE out of New York.
Federal officials identified the wounded man as Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old whom the NYPD also named. They said Belgal was in the country illegally, wanted in connection with gang-related activity, had an immigration detainer, and was out on probation. Agents said he defied orders and used his car as a weapon, accelerating at federal vehicles and officers. At least one ICE agent fired seven rounds. Belgal was shot in the neck and taken to a hospital. His 5-year-old son was in the car and was not harmed.
The New York Post reported Mullin’s blunt assessment of the mayor’s tone and its effect on the street.
"I’m speaking facts. The mayor speaks with a political tone. His words are dangerous, and incite hostility. It doesn’t help."
Mullin did not stop at tone. He said Mamdani turns a blind eye to criminal arrests while refusing to stand with the officers who protect City Hall itself.
"We arrest thousands, weekly, that are criminals and he turns a blind eye to it and won’t even stand up for his own NYPD officers, that by the way, protect him every single day."
Late Thursday, after the Bronx incident, Mamdani demanded that ICE be abolished and blasted the agency as “rotten to its core.” He also argued that federal immigration enforcement makes the city less safe, language Mullin treated as an attack on the men and women enforcing federal law.
Mamdani put that view in plain terms.
"We know, and I have said this directly, whether to the president or to the public, ICE undermines public safety. It makes us less safe."
Mullin rejected the mayor’s framing and the label Mamdani applied to Belgal. He mocked the idea that the wounded suspect was simply “a New Yorker” in the way the mayor cast him, and he tied the rhetoric to a refusal to enforce basic law.
"You’re going to call that a New Yorker?! I think that’s a far cry. He said that ICE is rotten to the core. Really? When men and women at ICE each day are enforcing the laws that he refuses to enforce."
The secretary went further on the abolish-ICE demand, asking who would remove murderers, thieves, and gang members from city streets if the agency disappeared. That is the core dispute: whether sanctuary rules and anti-ICE politics shield the public or shield offenders.
"He said he wants to abolish ICE. Well, Mayor, if you abolish ICE, who’s going to take your criminals off the streets of your own town? Who’s going to take the murderers and the thieves and the gangbangers?"
Mullin said President Trump spoke with the mayor and offered to release Belgal to NYPD custody. The secretary presented that outreach as a practical step even as Mamdani, in Mullin’s account, demanded the wounded man be freed and ICE agents leave the city. Trump, a staunch defender of ICE, was also preparing a Friday afternoon stop in Syracuse to campaign for Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman.
Mamdani has publicly described a working relationship with the president, including in recent comments that shared love of New York drives his talks with Trump. Private contacts have drawn attention before, including reporting on a White House invitation after a Gracie Mansion sit-down.
None of that softened Mullin’s operational line. He said enforcement would not pause, and he did not apologize for it.
"No, we’re not putting a pause on enforcement. I’m sorry, we’re not. In fact, I’m not sorry."
He cast ICE’s daily work as going after the worst offenders and said agents would keep doing that job. Mullin also said agents did not know the five-year-old was in the car when the confrontation unfolded, a detail that underscores how fast and messy these street encounters become when a driver accelerates at officers.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed seven rounds were fired by at least one ICE agent and drew a bright line on local involvement. She made clear the NYPD had no role in the federal operation before the shooting.
"NYPD had no involvement in the federal operation prior to the shooting."
Belgal’s status sits at the center of the policy fight. Federal officials said he was in the country illegally, faced gang-related interest, carried a detainer, and was out on probation. New York’s sanctuary policies limit local cooperation with immigration enforcement. Mullin argued that approach does not contain crime inside city limits.
He said criminal activity does not stay put in sanctuary cities or states. It spreads into other neighborhoods and other states, he warned, and when that happens federal officers move on the worst offenders. In his account, sanctuary politicians create a safe haven, then object when the violence and the enforcement that follows spill into public view.
That is the accountability gap voters can see without a law degree. A man with a detainer and probation status ends up in a Bronx confrontation with a child in the car. Federal agents fire when they say a vehicle is used as a weapon. The mayor answers by calling ICE rotten and demanding the agency be abolished. The homeland security secretary answers that the mayor will not even stand up for the NYPD officers who guard him every day.
Mamdani’s City Hall tenure has already produced other flashpoints that feed the same trust debate, from the uproar after he gave a 9/11 memorial pen to an ex-al-Qaeda lawyer to continued legal fights as he presses a pied-à-terre tax after a court loss. Federal scrutiny has followed him as well, including the process around receiving federal security clearance months into office.
Mullin labeled the mayor’s posture “political theater and he knows it.” He drew a straight line from rhetoric to risk: words that paint federal officers as the threat, he argued, incite hostility toward the people enforcing statutes the city will not. ICE, in his telling, arrests thousands of criminals weekly while local leadership looks away and then condemns the agency when a takedown turns violent.
The sequence is not complicated. Thursday brought the Bronx shooting. Late Thursday brought the abolish-ICE demand and the “rotten to its core” attack. Friday brought Mullin’s rebuttal, the two-hour conversation he said he held with Mamdani, and the president’s reported offer to place Belgal with the NYPD instead of leaving the dispute frozen in talking points. Mullin said the federal job remains the same: enforce the nation’s laws and pursue the worst of the worst.
Open questions remain about Belgal’s medical outcome, the full charging picture behind the gang-related claim, and whether any custody handoff to the NYPD actually occurred. What is not in doubt is the policy choice on display. One side treats ICE as a public-safety threat to be driven out. The other treats detainers, probation status, and vehicle assaults on officers as reasons enforcement continues, in New York and beyond.
When a mayor spends his capital attacking the officers who remove repeat offenders, and a DHS secretary has to remind him who protects his own city, taxpayers can judge which approach takes crime seriously.