If you only listened to Mayor Zohran Mamdani you’d think that ICE was just plucking out random New Yorkers to shoot for no other reason than sheer malice.
On Thursday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a raid in the Bronx that led to the shooting of an illegal alien by an agent or agents. The man was taken to a nearby hospital and is expected to survive the shooting.
The mayor, who went into full activist mode, almost immediately took to the streets to deliver a fiery speech about how awful ICE is. He said Thursday night that this incident was proof that the agency needed to be abolished.
“I am angry tonight,” he said in a clip of the speech posted on X. “Because today ICE shot a New Yorker. They shot a New Yorker while his five-year-old child was in the car. ICE makes this city less safe.”
Of course, shortly thereafter anti-ICE protesters violently clashed with police.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more unrest in coming days thanks to the dishonest narrative Mamdani peddled.
Let’s be real here. Leftists want to abolish ICE no matter what the facts of this or any other case. They want open borders. They will do anything they can to undermine U.S. immigration law enforcement. And they will even stoop to protecting violent criminals to ensure that they get their way.
They’ve done it before and they are doing it again.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, the man involved in the shooting was an illegal alien from the Dominican Republic who had racked up an extensive criminal history since he arrived in the United States.
According to a DHS statement, the illegal alien—identified by NYPD as Oscar Belgal—had on his record “a prior criminal conviction for grand larceny, and multiple prior arrests for assault, robbery, possession of drugs, and weapons possession. He has associations to the Trinitarios gang, the same gang who brutally shot a CBP officer last year.”
What a fine “New Yorker.”
DHS further said that the illegal alien had been arrested on Dec. 7, 2023, “but was released into the community a few days later by reckless Democrat sanctuary policies that put American lives at risk.”
This gets to the deeper problem with sanctuary cities and states. Why wasn’t this man handed over to ICE and deported years ago? More on that in a bit.
So, Belgal wasn’t a New Yorker at all, had a history of hurting innocent people—maybe even some actual New Yorkers—and is a gangbanger to boot.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said at a press conference on Friday that Belgal had previously attempted to evade arrest by ICE.
This man knew that ICE was on to him, had dodged the law before, and was apparently willing to put his 5-year-old son in harm’s way to escape again. Why wasn’t Mamdani outraged that a criminal was willing to put a child in harm’s way to escape deportation?
A representative for ICE, Marcos Charles, said that during the arrest, Belgal “accelerated his vehicle, smashing into two of our government ICE vehicles and then weaponized his vehicle and proceeded to accelerate going towards other officers.”
That’s apparently when an ICE agent or possibly multiple agents opened fire.
“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,” Charles said, according to the New York Post. “Mr. Belgal was struck by one of the bullets or fragments superficially in the neck. He stopped his vehicle. We arrested him, rendered first aid, and then took him to the hospital.”
Certainly, there will and should be a full investigation of exactly what happened, but none of the facts seemed to matter to Mamdani, who seemed eager to send a New York crowd into a tizzy.
Oh, and he actually tried to secure the illegal alien’s release too.
“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,” Mamdani said during his Thursday night speech before saying that ICE was “rotten to its core” and needed to be abolished.
Think about that for a moment.
The Left is so committed to the idea that Trump and ICE are the baddies, that immigration enforcement is so wrong, that leftists are ultimately willing to put even the most terrible, dangerous criminals back on the street to fulfill their agenda.
The rot is in cities like New York City and states like New York, sanctuary jurisdictions that intentionally undermine law enforcement and make it necessary to deploy ICE agents to clean up the mess.
Democrats have frequently peddled the theory that ICE shootings take place in blue states is because of partisanship. But the answer to why is much simpler. Sanctuary cities have created conditions whereby local law enforcement is blocked from cooperating with the federal government.
So, the bottom line is that ICE isn’t making New Yorkers less safe. The mayor is. Gov. Kathy Hochul is. Will they change their tune given the consequences of their actions? Don’t count on it.
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
