Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters Friday that New York officials have refused to honor a single detainer request from his department for illegal immigrants held in local custody.
Speaking at DHS headquarters in Washington, Mullin said the department issued 14,766 detainers to New York law enforcement entities. Those requests covered migrants accused of a combined 47,750 felony charges, including at least 258 foreign nationals being held on murder charges. The comments landed hours after ICE officers in the Bronx shot a suspected gang member during an attempted arrest that federal officials said turned into a vehicle attack.
Mullin framed the non-response as a public-safety failure that puts criminal aliens back on American streets. He also took aim at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani over silence following the stabbing of an off-duty NYPD officer last week, which authorities framed as involving an illegal immigrant.
Mullin did not soften the charge. He said New York’s answer to the federal hold requests was no answer at all.
He told reporters:
"Silence. Absolute silence is what we’ve got from New York off of those retainers,"
He pressed the core question in plain terms.
Mullin said:
"So you have to ask yourself, why would they release these individuals back onto the streets? They’re illegals,"
He continued that the people covered by the requests “have no right to be back into the United States,” that they “have committed a crime,” and that “we know that they’re the worst.” Mullin accused so-called sanctuary politicians of enabling “criminal activity to thrive, not for the American citizens to be safe.”
The Post reported the secretary’s remarks alongside ICE’s account of the Bronx arrest attempt and the decision to move the target out of New York’s reach.
ICE Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations Marcos Charles described the target as Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old suspected gang member. Charles said Belgal was already known to agents.
Charles put it simply:
"He’s known,"
He added that the gang Belgal “runs with is known for thefts using weapons and mopeds.” Federal officials said Belgal faced New York charges including grand larceny, robbery, theft, and being armed with a deadly weapon. As of April 2025, he was serving five years of probation for felony grand larceny. ICE lodged a detainer based on those charges and alleged involvement in the shooting of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent two years ago in Lincoln Heights.
Charles said the attempted arrest came the day before Mullin’s Friday remarks. Agents used vehicles to box Belgal in. A 5-year-old boy believed to be Belgal’s son sat in the back of the SUV.
Charles walked through the sequence:
"Yesterday, we attempted to arrest Mr. Belgal. In the attempt, we used our vehicles to block him in,"
He said Belgal refused lawful orders to get out, then drove into federal vehicles and kept going.
Charles stated:
"Mr. Belgal refused lawful orders to exit his vehicle. He then accelerated his vehicle smashing into two of our government ICE vehicles and then weaponized his vehicle and proceeded to accelerate going towards other officers."
Charles said agents concluded the threat had become immediate. He described the decision to shoot as a trained response to danger aimed at officers and the public.
Charles said:
"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,"
Belgal was struck “by one of the bullets or fragments superficially in the neck,” Charles said. The vehicle stopped. Agents arrested him, gave first aid, and took him to a hospital.
Charles continued:
"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."
Charles said Belgal had refused to comply with federal immigration agents on Thursday as well, the day before the vehicle confrontation. Investigators have not publicly released a full medical update beyond the superficial neck wound described Friday, and authorities have not publicly detailed what happened to the child after the stop.
Federal officials did not leave Belgal in a setting where local non-cooperation could again become the issue. Charles said the placement was deliberate.
He explained:
"Because of Mr. Belgal’s lengthy criminal history and known fleeing, we placed him in a detention facility out of sight of the state of New York,"
Law enforcement sources told The Post that Belgal was in federal custody in New Jersey on Friday morning. Charles said the government would keep pressing the case and the immigration process.
Charles said ICE would “continue to prosecute this individual to the fullest,” continue removal proceedings, and “try to remove him from this country as quickly as possible following his charges.”
A detainer is a formal federal request asking a jail or local agency to hold someone for a short window so ICE can take custody. Mullin’s charge is that New York entities ignored those holds entirely across the 14,766 requests he cited. The secretary tied that refusal to the felony-charge totals and the murder-charge count he put on the record Friday.
Mullin also criticized Mayor Mamdani for saying nothing about the off-duty NYPD officer stabbed last week, an attack framed in the reporting as allegedly involving an illegal immigrant. New York officials’ formal reply to the detainer figures was not included in the public remarks package released Friday, and investigators have not publicly confirmed every element of Belgal’s alleged role in the earlier Lincoln Heights CBP shooting beyond citing it as part of the detainer basis.
Charles’s account still leaves several open investigative and procedural points. Authorities have not publicly released body-worn camera video or a full written incident package in the material described Friday. They have not publicly detailed the precise Bronx street location. They have not publicly issued a separate medical status update after hospital transport. They have not publicly described the child’s custody status after the stop. What federal officials did state is that Belgal is now held outside New York, that removal work continues, and that the department intends to push the case hard.
The Friday briefing bound two tracks into one argument: statewide non-response on detainers, and a concrete ICE arrest attempt in which officers said a target rammed federal vehicles and drove at agents with a child in the car. Mullin’s language treated the detainer refusals as a choice that returns people he called illegal criminals to the public. Charles’s language treated the Bronx stop as a known target, a refused order, and a vehicle used as a weapon until shots stopped the threat.
Belgal remains a charged and accused figure in the New York case history described by officials, not a convicted defendant on every allegation tied to the detainer. The CBP agent shooting from two years ago was cited as alleged involvement supporting the federal hold, not as a fully adjudicated finding in the Friday remarks. The murder-charge figure Mullin cited was a count of foreign nationals being held on those charges among the broader detainer population he described, not a claim that every person on every detainer had been convicted.
Even with those limits, the operational picture federal officials put forward was blunt. DHS said it asked New York to hold people. Mullin said New York answered with silence. ICE said it then had to run a high-risk street arrest that ended with gunfire, a hospital run, and a transfer into federal custody in New Jersey.
When local systems freeze out federal detainers, the public does not get a theoretical debate. It gets the next arrest attempt, the next ramming claim, and the next argument over who was left free to move until agents boxed a vehicle in on a city street.
