Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin slammed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for his defense of the wanted criminal illegal immigrant whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers shot Thursday in Manhattan’s Marble Hill neighborhood.
Mullin made the fiery comments during a press conference Friday morning. Just hours before, Mamdani said he spent two hours on the phone begging President Donald Trump to release the Dominican suspect, 28-year-old Oscar Belgal, who allegedly has ties to the Trinitarios gang.
Belgal has a criminal conviction for grand larceny and multiple prior arrests for assault, robbery, drug possession, and weapons possession, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The NYPD arrested Belgal on December 7, 2023, but released him days later without notifying ICE due to sanctuary laws.
During the Thursday night phone call, Trump offered to hand Belgal to the NYPD to face justice, the Homeland Security secretary said. The mayor refused the offer, saying he wanted the illegal immigrant released into the community.
“I spoke to the mayor several times last night. He was wanting us to release this individual back onto the streets. President Trump actually got involved and said that we would release him to New York’s finest,” Mullin said.
“If NYPD wants to take the charges and pursue the charges, we’ll be happy to release him to the custody of NYPD. I shared that with the mayor. The mayor once again said ‘we will not be detaining him,’ wanted us to walk away and allow this dangerous criminal back onto the streets,” he added.
Thursday’s shooting occurred as ICE officers were making their second attempt to arrest Belgal, who fled from them in September.
The criminal illegal immigrant suspect, who had a 5-year-old child in the car, refused to comply with orders to exit his vehicle when the agents boxed him in, accelerated his car, and smashed it into two ICE vehicles, Marcos Charles, executive associate director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, said.
He then “weaponized his vehicle and proceeded to accelerate, going towards other officers,” Charles said.
“Our officers, using their training and believing that their life and the lives of the partners and the general public were in danger, used their training and fired weapons,” Charles said.
“One of the bullets or fragments” struck the illegal immigrant “superficially” in the neck, and officers gave him first aid and took him to the hospital, according to Charles.
To prevent him from ever getting away again, ICE moved him to a detention center outside New York but declined to provide details on the specific location.
The shooting occurred just days after two illegal immigrants stabbed an off-duty NYPD officer seven times before fleeing the scene. Mullin called it “hypocrisy” that Mamdani stayed silent about the earlier incident while throwing a “ringtail fit” over a criminal illegal immigrant.
“Once again the mayor was completely silent last week when his own NYPD officer was stabbed seven times by two criminals that they had released back into the streets,” Mullin said. “You didn’t see the outrage that he spoke from the podium last night from [sic], but he wants to go after ICE for enforcing our nation’s laws?”
Mullin also decried Mamdani’s labeling of Belgal as a “New Yorker” as “a far cry” from reality.
“He used words like New Yorkers, by describing Oscar as a New Yorker. I’m sorry, he is from the Dominican Republic, he came to this country illegally a few years ago and ever since he has come in he has committed crime and crime after crime,” Mullin said.
“Our records show he may only have been in the country for three years thanks to the Biden administration and three years of extensive criminal activity. You’re gonna call that a New Yorker? I think that’s a far cry,” he added.
Mamdani shared his account of the call during a press conference Thursday night.
“For the past two hours, I’ve been on the phone with President Trump and Secretary Mullin negotiating the release of the man ICE agents shot. Those negotiations were unsuccessful,” he said. “Now I made clear to the president, to the secretary, our request that ICE agents leave the scene entirely — as well as the demand that ICE stop its enforcement actions in New York City.”
He slammed ICE, claiming the agency “operates with impunity” while “they sow chaos and terror across our country,” adding “that they have killed far more of our neighbors than they could ever have claimed to save.”
The democratic socialist also used the incident to renew his calls to “abolish ICE.” Mullin responded, saying such a move would only breed more crime.
Since President Trump’s inauguration, ICE has lodged 14,766 detainer requests for New York authorities to hand over criminal illegal immigrants. New York authorities ultimately met those requests with “silence,” Mullin said.
“He said that ICE is rotten to the core. Really? The men and women at ICE each day are enforcing the laws he refuses to enforce. We arrest thousands weekly that are criminals, going after the worst of the worst, and he turns a blind eye to it and won’t stand up for his own NYPD officers that, by the way, protect him every day,” Mullin said.
“He says he wants to abolish ICE. Well, mayor, if you abolish ICE, who will take the criminals off the streets of your own town? Who will take the murderers and thieves and gangbangers? Who will take them off the street because you aren’t allowing NYPD officers to do it and they want to,” Mullin added.
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