New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Sunday likened Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) recent shooting of a man in Manhattan’s Marble Hill enclave to the scene of a mass shooting — and called for an end to the agency’s operations in his city.
Mamdani joined MS NOW’s Jacob Soboroff for his first media interview since ICE agents fatally shot 28-year-old Oscar Belgal during an enforcement operation while he was in his car with his five-year-old child also inside.
Belgal was struck in the neck even though the child was physically unharmed and in the care of family members.
Describing his view on videos of the shooting scene that have since emerged, Mamdani told Soboroff that it was not clear, even to the mayor, that the officers in the footage were members of law enforcement because they were in plain clothes.
“What you can see in that video and in the videos that have been released since, people, people walking by outside aren’t even sure what they were seeing because in that footage it looks like you’re looking at a mass shooter instead of seeing someone who would be representing a federal agency,” Mamdani said.
Additionally, Mamdani claimed that ICE agents “view the law as a suggestion” — alluding to how the New York Police Department prohibits officers from shooting someone in a vehicle in most circumstances.
“There’s a reason why law enforcement officers are supposed to wear identifiable information and uniforms,” the mayor also said.
Mamdani said he spoke Thursday evening with Donald Trump and the president’s Homeland Security Secretary, Markwayne Mullin. And the mayor reiterated that he sees no place for ICE in New York, despite the mass deportation program that Trump has pursued throughout his second presidency.
The mayor said he made it clear that the New York Police Department would investigate the Belgal shooting and its aftermath, which led to large street protests.
Mamdani said Belgal was still in custody at the time of Sunday’s interviews. At a court hearing Friday, his lawyers said he had been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, which is most recently used to detain immigrants.
He had been temporarily taken to a private ICE facility in New Jersey after leaving the hospital where he received medical treatment following the shooting.
Since Trump returned to power in early 2025, U.S. immigration agents have shot dead at least two dozen people, according to one analysis. This includes three American citizens who were killed.
Thursday’s shooting in Marble Hill — which is geographically in the Bronx but is considered part of Manhattan — comes as ICE arrests have reached record levels. The agency reached those numbers after abandoning the high-profile raids it conducted in 2025 to more discreetly send agents into communities across the United States.
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