By GUILLERMO SCHRODER

On Thursday, Oct. 8, ICE agents stopped and shot seven rounds at Oscar Belgal, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, who had just picked up his five-year-old from school. A shot struck Belgal in the neck as his son watched from the backseat. The ICE agents approached the car with guns drawn and in plain clothes and did not identify themselves as federal agents during the stop.

After spending five hours in the hospital, Belgal was sent to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. On Oct. 23, a judge denied an emergency motion for his release in order to obtain medical care; he is still awaiting surgery to remove the bullet from his neck. The petition for his release stated that “the entire left side of Oscar’s face remains numb” and that “he struggles to hear anything out of his left ear.”

Police Commissioner Tisch and Mayor Mamdani spoke together at a press conference on the day of the shooting. Mamdani condemned the violence and shared harsh words for ICE (“We know that ICE is rotten to its core”), but he stood by as Tisch flatly elaborated Belgal’s criminal record and denied NYPD involvement in the vicious attack.

In the hours after the shooting, hundreds of protesters joined together outside of New York Presbyterian-Allen Hospital (where Belgal was taken following the attack). The NYPD quickly swooped in to suppress the popular dissent and protect the ICE vehicles stationed at the hospital. The police responded to the protesters violently, with video showing officers pushing and throwing protesters, including congressional candidate and DSA member Darializa Avila Chevalier, to the ground. Mamdani has made no comment on this use of force by the NYPD or on their role in protecting and facilitating ICE’s operations.

The day following the shooting, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a statement justifying the shooting, cruelly pointing to Belgal’s criminal history and immigration status, and attacking the sanctuary city policies that aim to provide respite to immigrants in New York City. In a similar vein, just several days later, the president of the NYPD Sergeant’s Union, Vincent Vallelong, accused Mayor Mamdani and the DSA of “treating [Belgal] like he’s the victim” and politicizing the event, charging that they would seize this opportunity to attempt to reform the NYPD. These statements represent the utter lack of empathy and unrelenting hostility of these capitalist institutions in their pursuit to terrorize immigrants and discipline the working class.

The Democratic Party has responded with half-hearted condemnations of the attempted execution, stopping far short of serious proposals to confront ICE and the NYPD. Chuck Schumer, N.Y. Governor Kathy Hochul, and other Democratic officials have called for the release of body-cam footage and an independent investigation into the shooting, as though superior oversight could “fix” the fundamentally reactionary federal agency.

On the day of the shooting, both Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani separately spoke directly with President Trump, requesting an immediate pause on ICE activity in New York City and for the release of Belgal from federal custody. Inevitably, such paltry attempts to halt ICE activity by negotiating a deal with Trump were unsuccessful.

Just last week, over 100 N.Y. Democratic officials, ranging from Mamdani to Sen. Hakeem Jeffries, signed on to a letter urging private parking lot owners in New York to ban ICE agents from conducting operations on their properties, but DHS officials have already told The Hill that this will not stop their deportation campaign in the city. These responses are transparently inadequate given the violence and repression visited upon immigrant communities in the city by both ICE and the NYPD.

Meanwhile, representatives of the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party, including the likes of AOC, Michigan Senatorial candidate Abdul el-Sayed, and Mamdani himself, are making more radical calls to abolish ICE, but continue to encounter the limits of their role in a ruling-class party. This rhetoric affirms the justified feelings of many outraged Americans, but it also serves to redirect the masses of workers and immigrants away from independent political action, and back into the Democratic Party. Democratic leadership expresses no intention to accomplish anything more than “accountability” reforms of ICE activity.

The DSA shared three demands in response to the shooting: abolish ICE, disband the Strategic Response Group (SRG) and Community Response Team (CRT), and fire Tisch to “drive ICE out of NYC.” Their call to abolish ICE may ring true, yet they face similar organizational limits as “progressive” Democrats (of which many nowadays were borne of DSA electoral politics). Expecting “socialist elected officials” such as Mamdani to “lead this fight” while tangled in Democrat Party politics will always lead to disappointment and the disorganization of independent struggles of the oppressed.

Disbanding the SRG and CRT is a stronger demand; these are police institutions that surveil and wreak havoc on oppositional political movements and marginalized communities throughout New York City. It is important to remember, however, that Mamdani ultimately exercises the final authority over the activity of these institutions. He has the power to follow through on his continued stated intentions to disband the SRG, yet a plan of action or time-table remain to be seen. As to the final demand regarding the dismissal of Tisch as police commissioner, Mamdani has already shut that dream down. The demand in itself is not new, nor confined to the socialist left; the New York Civil Liberties Union, for example, has been a long-standing critic of Tisch’s administration of the NYPD since before Mamdani took office. It is also largely symbolic—removing Tisch would almost certainly not result in any significant transformation of the NYPD’s militarized operations. Mamdani’s continued inaction in the face of these demands repeatedly demonstrates the limits of DSA’s strategy of running socialist candidates through capitalist parties.

While the spectacular terroristic violence of ICE in NYC has shocked the city, brutal and highly militarized policing is nothing new to the city. Mamdani’s accession to mayor of New York also put him in charge of the NYPD, which at around 34,000 officers, makes it the largest municipal police force in the world, comparable to the standing army of most nations. The NYPD has been an oppressive and terroristic force in New York’s poor, Black, and immigrant communities since its inception. The growth of modern surveillance and policing technologies has meant an enormous increase in both the budget and scope of the NYPD’s work.

Mamdani’s actions demonstrate that he considers the continued occupation of working-class neighborhoods by the militarized NYPD to be a necessary compromise for his political agenda.This most recent ICE shooting was, in fact, an opportunity for Mamdani to solidify his truce with NYC police. Mamdani stood on stage as Jessica Tisch, billionaire heiress and commissioner of the NYPD, read Belgal’s criminal record, as if it justified his illegal shooting. In his own statement, Mamdani was silent on the NYPD’s well-documented informal collaboration with ICE, which has received tacit approval from Tisch. Mamdani’s press conference call to “abolish ICE” rang hollow. If he will not confront the NYPD, a group he directly controls, how can anyone possibly believe that he will confront ICE?

Of course, the struggle for the rights of immigrants cannot be won by any single politician. Only an independent, organized movement of immigrants, workers, and their allies can achieve a lasting solution to this crisis. While Mamdani could dismantle the Strategic Resource Group, dismiss Tisch, and appoint a police commissioner who will ensure that the NYPD does not collaborate with ICE, these steps alone would merely blunt the worst excesses of the far right’s agenda. Mamdani’s celebrity politics, as with the politics of the Democratic Party at large, prioritize strong words paired with backroom deals, compromises, and negotiations with the MAGA right.

The aims of anti-ICE and pro-immigrant activists are simple: immediate abolition of ICE and an end to deportations. These are goals that we can accomplish by building strong, organized movements that are independent of the two capitalist parties.

The post Justice for Oscar Belgal, shot by ICE in NYC first appeared on Workers’ Voice/La Voz de los Trabajadores.

From Workers’ Voice/La Voz de los Trabajadores via This RSS Feed.