New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani phoned President Trump to free an illegal immigrant shot after ramming ICE vehicles, and demanded federal agents stop enforcement across the city.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani spent Thursday evening on the phone with President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, pushing for the release of a man shot during a federal immigration arrest in Marble Hill. The talks failed. Mamdani then demanded that ICE agents leave the scene and end enforcement actions in New York City altogether.
Just the News reported the mayor’s account of those calls and the confrontation that set them off. The man shot was Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old Dominican national with prior criminal convictions. ICE described the action as a targeted enforcement operation. A 5-year-old sat unharmed in the back seat.
Federal officials say Belgal did not simply flee. They say he turned his vehicle into a weapon.
According to ICE officials, the sequence began when officers moved to take Belgal into custody. The New York Post reported that Belgal accelerated, smashed into two government ICE vehicles, then drove toward other officers.
Marcos Charles of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations described the moment in plain terms.
"He then accelerated his vehicle, smashing into two of our government ICE vehicles and then weaponized his vehicle and proceeded to accelerate going towards other officers"
Charles said officers acted because they believed their lives, their partners’ lives, and the public were in danger.
"Our officers, using their training, and believing that their life and the life of the partners and the general public were in danger, used their training and fired weapons"
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at least one ICE officer discharged a weapon seven times. The rounds struck Belgal in the neck below the left ear. Agents had surrounded the vehicle and fired through the front windshield. The shooting happened around 4 p.m. Belgal was taken to New York-Presbyterian Allen in stable condition and later placed in federal custody in New Jersey. Protests formed at the hospital.
While Belgal recovered under federal hold, the mayor framed the case as a negotiation over release. Mamdani said he made his position clear to the president and the Homeland Security secretary.
"For the past two hours, I’ve been on the phone with President Trump and [Homeland Security] Secretary Mullin negotiating the release of the man ICE agents shot. Those negotiations were unsuccessful,"
He went further.
"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."
That is the mayor of America’s largest city asking the White House to free a man federal officers say just rammed their vehicles, then seeking a blanket halt to ICE work inside city limits. Trump and Mullin did not agree. The negotiations ended without the release Mamdani wanted.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin defended the officers the next morning at DHS headquarters in Washington. The Washington Examiner reported Mullin’s account: Belgal was an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic with an extensive criminal history. Officers moved to arrest him. He tried to escape with a 5-year-old child in the vehicle.
Federal details fill in the record Mamdani sidelined. Belgal faced prior charges including grand larceny, theft, and robbery. He was on probation. He had a DHS detainer. Officials linked him to a gang known for armed thefts. Bodycam footage was expected for release. The wound was described as superficial to the neck. He was treated, then held in New Jersey under federal custody.
None of that criminal history, the detainer, or the vehicle assault appeared in the mayor’s public demand that agents stand down citywide.
ICE called the Marble Hill action a targeted enforcement operation. Officers approached a man they sought to arrest. By the federal account, he smashed into their vehicles and drove at them with a child in the car. They fired. He survived. The child was unharmed.
Mamdani’s response was to spend two hours seeking that man’s release and to insist ICE leave the scene and stop working in New York City. He cast federal immigration enforcement itself as the problem. He did not lead with the ramming, the prior convictions, the probation status, or the detainer already on file.
Taxpayers fund both City Hall and the federal agents who execute immigration law. When a mayor treats a vehicle assault on those agents as a bargaining chip for sanctuary policy, the incentives are plain. Soft-on-enforcement politics comes first. Officer safety and the criminal record come second.
Trump and Mullin held the line. Belgal stayed in custody. ICE was not ordered out of the city on the mayor’s say-so. The agents who faced a vehicle used as a weapon were not pulled to satisfy a local political demand.
New Yorkers living with the results of open-borders experiments did not get a mayor defending the law. They got a mayor negotiating for the man who, federal officers say, tried to run them down.
Lawful residents and the officers who protect them should not have to watch City Hall lobby Washington to free a suspect and empty the field.
