Actress Ellen Barkin called to “burn ICE to the ground” after agents wounded a violent illegal immigrant in the Bronx, as Mayor Mamdani demanded the agency be abolished.
ICE officers in New York City opened fire on a vehicle after an illegal immigrant tried to use it as a weapon, wounding the driver in the neck and setting off a familiar political storm.
The man, identified as Oscar Belgal, suffered a non-life-threatening graze wound. A child was in the car. Hollywood actress Ellen Barkin answered with a social media post demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement be burned down, while Mayor Zohran Mamdani called for the agency to be “abolished.”
Homeland Security officials said the agents feared for their lives. They also said sanctuary politics helped create the mess in the first place.
Just The News reported that Belgal is a 28-year-old Dominican national with prior drug convictions and alleged ties to the Trinitarios gang. Authorities said the stop happened during a targeted enforcement operation in Marble Hill in the Bronx.
DHS said officers first tried a peaceful arrest. Belgal refused orders, accelerated into two government vehicles, then moved toward the agents. Officers fired in self-defense and then rendered aid. The child in the vehicle was unharmed.
Belgal’s record, as laid out by federal officials, is not thin. He had a 2025 conviction for selling fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine and received five years of probation. DHS also pointed to prior arrests involving assault, robbery, drugs, and weapons, plus a grand larceny conviction and alleged gang links.
Belgal was already under DHS investigation for gang activity when the encounter turned violent.
DHS official Marcos Charles put the officers’ decision in plain terms.
Senior ICE official Marcos Charles said:
"The officers, using their training and believing that their lives, the lives of their partners and the general public were in danger, fired their weapons."
Homeland Security chief Markwayne Mullin told the press the migrant put his own child in danger by turning the car into a weapon. Mullin also made clear that DHS will not pause efforts to take dangerous criminal migrants into custody for deportation.
Mullin went further on the political climate around the case.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said:
"I want to make it very clear, sanctuary politicians, they create an environment for criminal activity to thrive. Not for the American citizens to be safe. Underneath President Trump, he made it very clear he was going to restore law and order in our cities and our towns and our states, despite what happens with career politicians that put criminals in front of law-abiding citizens. When you have sanctuary cities and sanctuary politicians you endanger the safety of the public."
Mullin called Mamdani’s rhetoric “dangerous” and said such remarks would “incite hostility.”
While federal officers described a ramming attempt and a child in the back seat, Barkin took a different path. Breitbart News reported that the Sea of Love actress answered a reporter’s message about the wounding of Belgal with a blunt post on X.
Ellen Barkin wrote:
"Burn ICE to the ground"
That line did not arrive in isolation. Last November, Barkin claimed there is “no difference” between ICE officers and Nazis. In June, after then-DHS secretary Kristi Noem was sent to a hospital, Barkin called her a c***. A few months ago, she claimed assassination attempts on President Trump’s life were all “faked.”
Her latest post treated a self-defense shooting of a man accused of ramming agents as cause to erase a federal law-enforcement agency.
New York’s mayor did not wait long either. On Friday, Mamdani called for ICE to be “abolished.”
Just The News also carried his broader attack from the night of the shooting.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said:
"What happened today was an outrage. We know that ICE is rotten to its core. Today’s shooting is only further devastating confirmation of what we have long known."
Mullin’s reply was direct: sanctuary politicians put criminals ahead of law-abiding citizens, and that choice endangers the public. DHS, he said, will keep taking dangerous criminal migrants off the street.
Fox News reported that U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken temporarily barred Belgal’s removal or transfer outside the New York and New Jersey districts without court approval while a detention challenge proceeds.
ICE’s account in that coverage matched the core sequence already described by DHS: Belgal refused lawful orders, pulled forward, and accelerated toward officers. Agents fired and struck him below the left ear. A 5-year-old in the vehicle was unharmed.
NYPD later released bodycam and surveillance video of the aftermath. An immigration attorney for Belgal, Harold Solis, argued that a criminal history does not make it lawful “to shoot a father in an afternoon with his son in the back seat.” Federal officials countered that Belgal created that danger himself when he drove at officers.
The legal hold does not erase the record DHS has already put on the table: drug trafficking conviction, alleged gang ties, prior arrests, and a vehicle used against agents during a targeted operation.
The Bronx shooting landed at the intersection of three choices. An illegal immigrant with a serious criminal history refused arrest and drove at federal officers. A Hollywood actress answered with a call to burn the enforcement agency to the ground. A big-city mayor demanded that same agency be abolished.
DHS chose a fourth path. Officers used force when they believed their lives, their partners’ lives, and the public were in danger. The secretary said enforcement will continue. The child in the car walked away unharmed. Belgal’s wound was not life-threatening.
That is the sequence the public can test against the officials’ words, the criminal history, and the posts that followed.
When elites cheer the wrecking of immigration law after a ramming attempt, they tell working Americans exactly whose side they are on, and it is not the officers or the public those officers protect.
