‘Abolish ICE’: Mamdani, AOC and other Democrats urge action after New York shooting

Leading New York Democrats expressed anger and demanded curbs on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violence after a federal officer shot a man in a car where a five-year-old child was sitting, sparking fierce protests.

At least seven shots were reportedly fired, hitting the man in the neck late Thursday afternoon as children were coming home from school in the busy Marble Hill neighborhood of the south Bronx in New York City. Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani, the city’s mayor, led condemnation of the conduct.

Darializa Avila Chevalier, the incoming Democratic New York congresswoman, rushed to the protests and ended up being knocked over in the chaos as local police and demonstrators clashed. The man was conscious and hospitalized, authorities said, while later he was taken away from the hospital by ICE, according to the mayor.

Mamdani called the incident “unconscionable” and stated that ICE, part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), had “whisked him away” from the New York-Presbyterian Allen hospital in upper Manhattan. A similar incident occurred in Texas last month when a man was shot by an ICE officer in Austin and taken by federal authorities from a local hospital to ICE detention about 140 miles away.

Early reports indicated that agents had surrounded the man and the child in his car in a residential area before firing multiple rounds. The child was physically unharmed, Mamdani confirmed.

Both Hochul and Mamdani spoke to Donald Trump and Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, by phone. “I have been on the phone with President Trump and Secretary Mullin negotiating the release of the man ICE agents shot. Those negotiations were unsuccessful,” Mamdani told a press conference. He demanded that the Trump administration stop ICE's enforcement actions in New York City, stating, “ICE is rotten to its core.”