By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2026-10-09 13:50:00 | Updated at 2026-10-09 14:57:12
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WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin accused New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani of incitement in the name of “political theater” Friday over his attacks on immigration officers following the shooting of a suspected migrant gang member in the Bronx a day earlier.
“I’m speaking facts. The mayor speaks with a political tone,” Mullin told reporters during a fiery press availability. “His words are dangerous, and incite hostility. It doesn’t help.”
Mullin said he spoke for two hours with Mamdani, who demanded the wounded man, identified by the NYPD as 28-year-old Oscar Belgal, be released and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents leave the city.
According to the former senator from Oklahoma, President Trump also spoke with the mayor and offered to release Belgal to NYPD custody, only for Mamdani to demand the suspect be put back on the streets.
“We arrest thousands, weekly, that are criminals and he turns a blind eye to it and won’t even stand up for his own NYPD officers, that by the way, protect him every single day,” raged Mullin, who also pushed back on Hizzoner’s description of Belgal as a “New Yorker.”
“You’re going to call that a New Yorker?! I think that’s a far cry. He said that ICE is rotten to the core. Really? When men and women at ICE each day are enforcing the laws that he refuses to enforce.”
Mamdani late Thursday demanded ICE be abolished, blasting the federal agency as “rotten to its core.”
“He said he wants to abolish ICE,” Mullin said. “Well, Mayor, if you abolish ICE, who’s going to take your criminals off the streets of your own town? Who’s going to take the murderers and the thieves and the gangbangers?”
‘No, we’re not putting a pause on enforcement. I’m sorry, we’re not. In fact, I’m not sorry,” he added.
“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, and we will not stop doing our job.”
