After a federal agent shot an immigrant in New York, activists are questioning Mamdani’s handling of the NYPD and his relationship with the White House.
President Donald Trump and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani walk out following their meeting at Gracie Mansion on September 21, 2026, in New York City.
(Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants President Donald Trump to end all ICE operations in the city after a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot a man in his car in northern Manhattan on Thursday.
“This is an unconscionable and incredibly serious situation,” Mamdani said in a statement hours after the incident. “I have called the President; when we speak I will demand that he ends all ICE enforcement actions in our city. I will not stand by while ICE agents terrorize our communities.”
The NYPD said that around 4 pm on October 8, federal agents were involved in a shooting and injured a man in the city’s Marble Hill residential area, the northernmost part of Manhattan. The police statement said that the shooting victim was conscious and receiving medical attention. The victim was later identified as Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old immigrant from the Dominican Republic. A 5-year-old boy, who police believe is Belgal’s son, was in the back seat.
Mayor Mamdani appeared at a press conference hours after the shooting. He told reporters that after a two-hour conversation with President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, he had failed to negotiate Belgal’s release. The developments have tested Mamdani’s approach to Trump, with whom he has maintained cordial terms despite their disagreements on a number of topics including immigration enforcement.
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The shooting has posed a new challenge for Mamdani, who faces pressure to respond to fears about law and order and placate his left-wing base, which wants to remove Jessica Tisch as police commissioner and stop the NYPD’s collaboration with ICE. The issue threatens to undermine a mayoralty that has so far tallied an impressive string of victories.
DHS Rebuffs Mamdani
The incident comes just over two weeks after Mamdani hosted Trump at his official residence, Gracie Mansion, on September 21. Mamdani has met Trump three times since his election last year. In a previous meeting, he was able to negotiate the release of a Columbia University student whom ICE had detained in her dorm room.
However, on October 9, a day after the shooting, Homeland Security officials said that there were no plans to pause immigration enforcement activities in New York. “We’re not putting a pause on enforcement,” Mullin said. He further attacked Mamdani and criticized New York’s sanctuary policies, which restrict city agencies from actively cooperating with federal civil immigration enforcement unless a person has been convicted of serious felonies. “It’s shameful that you have a mayor that goes out there and puts criminals over law-abiding citizens,” he said.
Marcos Charles, who heads ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, said that Belgal “weaponized his vehicle and proceeded to accelerate toward other officers.”
President Trump, for his part, has yet to address the shooting with reporters or on his Truth Social feed.
Mamdani Is Under Pressure From the Left
At the press conference, Mamdani said that he remains firm in his view that ICE must be abolished. “New York City will not stand by while ICE agents shoot New Yorkers. And we will not back down from the demand that so many, including myself, have put forward time and again. This is an agency that must be abolished,” the mayor said.
Mamdani’s words were drowned out by protesters chanting “Mamdani is complicit,” citing the NYPD’s continued cooperation with ICE operations in the city. Several protesters also criticized Mamdani for attending an October 7 candlelight vigil organized by the progressive group Israelis for Peace.
Even though the NYPD doesn’t officially collaborate with ICE and the city has taken measures to restrict its access to city property or New Yorkers’ private data, activists argued that the mayor can do a lot more to make it difficult for ICE to carry out operations in New York.
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“[Mamdani] was very vocally critical of ICE and promised that the New York Police Department would not work with ICE. He should be doing the maximum possible to make it hard for ICE to operate in New York City,” Ryan Costello, of the Maoist Communist Union, said. “When you help them [ICE agents] move around freely, when you presumably coordinate on intelligence, and when you brutalize protesters standing against ICE, the police are working hand in glove with ICE, and Zohran is overseeing that,” he said.
Labor activists also shared their worries about the increasing ICE arrests in New York. “We see the attacks on immigrants as an attack on the rights of all workers.… We don’t look to Mayor Mamdani or the Democratic Party to change things, but we look to the workers to take action,” Clara, a teacher and member of the grassroots organization Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants, said. “The way Minneapolis responded on their days of no work, no school, no shopping.… They were not general strikes, but they were a step towards something we need to see more of,” Clara said.
The activists also mentioned the NYPD’s response to the anti-ICE protesters. NYPD officers quickly arrived in the area, erected barriers, and pushed back protesters after the shooting. During the chaos, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist who will soon occupy the congressional seat representing Marble Hill, was shoved to the ground. Avila Chevalier later pressed Mamdani to follow through on his promise to disband the controversial police unit called the Strategic Response Group (SRG), while the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America called for the removal of NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch if she cannot end the NYPD’s complicity with ICE.
Avila Chevalier voiced what many in Mamdani’s left-wing base have demanded since he took over as mayor—to fire Tisch and disband the SRG. Though Mamdani has promised to disband the SRG, he has yet to officially end it, which Tisch supports. He also hasn’t shut down a controversial database of suspected gang members.
Mamdani now has a tricky balancing act if he is to placate his allies on the left and keep the peace with Governor Kathy Hochul, who encouraged his retention of Tisch as police commissioner. How he decides to navigate things this fall may shape the rest of his term.
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