Mayor Zohran Mamdani labeled an ICE-wounded migrant a New Yorker and vowed to push the agency out, as Homeland Security chief Markwayne Mullin rejected the claim.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted late Thursday that he was angry because ICE had shot a New Yorker, then demanded the agency leave the city. Homeland Security chief Markwayne Mullin answered the next morning by rejecting the label, citing the man's origin in the Dominican Republic, a short time in the country, and what he called extensive criminal activity.
Breitbart News reported the clash after the shooting left the man wounded and set off a custody fight between federal officers and City Hall. Mamdani has repeatedly cast New York as a sanctuary city that shields illegal migrants. Mullin said the federal government will keep enforcing national law inside the five boroughs anyway.
Mamdani, a Ugandan-born naturalized citizen who arrived in the United States at age seven in 1991, framed the shooting as an attack on the city itself. He offered no details on the location, the legal basis for the ICE action, or the man's record.
In the post, Mamdani wrote that the agency makes the city less safe and must go.
He stated:
"I am angry tonight, Because today ICE shot a New Yorker. They shot a New Yorker... ICE makes this city less safe. We want them out. Now."
Mullin later said the mayor had also called ICE “rotten to the core.” The Homeland Security chief treated that charge as an attack on officers who arrest thousands of criminal aliens every week and focus on the worst offenders.
Mullin identified the wounded man as Oscar Bergdahl and refused to accept Mamdani’s “New Yorker” label. He said Bergdahl came from the Dominican Republic, entered a few years earlier under the Biden administration, and had piled up crime after crime ever since.
Mullin put it this way:
"He used words like ‘New Yorkers’ by describing Oscar [Bergdahl] as a New Yorker. I’m sorry, he’s from the Dominican Republic. He came to this country legally a few years ago, and ever since he’s come in, he’s committed crime and crime after crime."
He added that records show the man may have been in the country only three years, all of them marked by extensive criminal activity. “You’re going to call that a New Yorker?” Mullin asked.
S1’s own narration calls Bergdahl an illegal migrant with a long criminal record. Mullin’s quote in the same account says he entered legally. The conflict sits unresolved in the available material; no charging documents or full rap sheet appear.
Mullin said he spoke with Mamdani several times the night of the shooting. According to the Homeland Security chief, the mayor wanted the wounded man released back onto the street and made clear New York would not detain him.
President Trump stepped in. Mullin said the president offered to turn Bergdahl over to NYPD if the department would take the criminal charges and pursue them. Mullin passed that offer to the mayor.
Mullin described the reply:
"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."
The exchange left federal officers holding a wounded suspect while City Hall refused to lock him up. Mullin tied the moment to a broader pattern. He said Mamdani stayed silent the previous week after two people the city had released stabbed an NYPD officer seven times. That officer, Mullin noted, is one of the men and women who protect the mayor every day.
Mullin contrasted that silence with Mamdani’s public fury at ICE:
"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. He didn’t see the outrage that he spoke from a podium last night from, but he wants to go after ICE for enforcing our nation’s laws."
Mamdani has declared New York an amnesty or sanctuary city and directed local government to extend protections and aid to many illegal migrants. That policy sets the city against federal immigration statutes that still apply inside its borders.
Mullin said ICE’s daily work is simply to enforce those statutes. He praised the force directly:
"Our job is to enforce the nation’s laws and go after the worst of the worst, and our men and women do a dang good job at it every single day."
He added that the same officers Mamdani attacks are the ones arresting criminal aliens by the thousands each week while the mayor turns a blind eye and then stands up for the NYPD personnel who guard him.
No absolute calendar date, precise shooting location, or full list of Bergdahl’s charges appears in the reporting. The core facts that do appear are straightforward: ICE wounded a man Mamdani immediately claimed as a New Yorker; the Homeland Security chief answered with the man’s foreign origin, short residence, and criminal history; the mayor sought his release without local detention; and the White House conditioned any hand-off on NYPD actually pursuing charges the city declined to take.
Mamdani’s post and Mullin’s rebuttal leave voters with a clear choice about what “New Yorker” means when federal officers remove a repeat criminal alien and City Hall calls the removal an attack on the city.
Taxpayers and lawful residents should not have to watch their mayor redefine citizenship downward so that criminal illegal migrants stand equal to the people who actually built and police the city.
