New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani demanded that the Trump administration end all Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in the city following a daytime shooting in the Bronx on Thursday, where a federal agent shot a 28-year-old Dominican migrant named Oscar Belgal.
A Bronx Confrontation Ends in Federal Custody
The incident unfolded around 16:00 local time on Thursday in the Marble Hill neighborhood at the northern tip of Manhattan.
Following the shooting, Mamdani spent two hours late Thursday night on the phone with President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. The mayor attempted to negotiate the release of Oscar Belgal. Those negotiations ultimately failed. Shortly before 23:00, ICE agents loaded the man into a camouflaged vehicle and drove away swiftly as crowds of protesters grew around the scene.
Mayor Mamdani Demands the End of ICE
Addressing the press around 23:00, Mamdani condemned the federal agency’s actions while his voice was nearly drowned out by shouting demonstrators, some of whom heckled him directly. We know that ICE is rotten to the core,
Mamdani stated during the press conference. The shooting of today only confirms, in an even more devastating way, what we have known for some time: that ICE acts with total impunity, that it sows chaos and terror throughout the country, and that it has killed many more of our neighbors than it could ever claim to have saved.
Mamdani stated that he made it clear to Trump that ICE must leave the neighborhood entirely and demanded an immediate halt to all enforcement actions within New York City. The mayor also declared that New York City will not stand idly by while ICE agents shoot New Yorkers, and stated that they will not relent in their demand that this is an agency that must be abolished. Hours earlier, via social media, the mayor wrote: This evening our thoughts are with the injured New Yorker and his family. Let’s get ICE out of our neighborhoods. Let’s get ICE out of our hospitals. Let’s get ICE out of our streets. Let’s get ICE away from our children.
When details of the event were still unclear, Mamdani had already labeled what happened as unacceptable and incredibly serious.
Escalating Federal Pressure on a Sanctuary City
Thursday’s shooting marks the first incident of its kind in New York under Donald Trump’s broader nationwide immigration sweep, which has resulted in fatalities across various states from California to Maine. Both New York City and New York State maintain sanctuary status, meaning local authorities do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
The socialist mayor arrived at the beginning of this year at City Hall in the most populous city in the United States—where 38% of the population was born abroad—with the promise to protect New York’s immigrants from the Trump administration, being an immigrant himself. Federal data compiled by the Deportation Data Project shows that ICE arrests in the city rose from 927 in May to 1,567 in July. Prior to Thursday, New York had largely avoided the high-profile mass raids seen in cities like Minneapolis and Chicago. Despite past tensions and divergent political platforms between the socialist mayor and the Republican president, Mamdani and Trump had maintained a relatively cordial line of communication until this confrontation.
| Metric / Detail | Reported Data |
|---|---|
| Date of Incident | Thursday |
| Location | Marble Hill, The Bronx, New York |
| Target of Enforcement | Oscar Belgal (28, Dominican Republic) |
| ICE Arrests in May | 927 |
| ICE Arrests in July | 1,567 |
