“Why are you guys killing my father?” Oscar Belgal’s son cried as ICE thugs shot his dad, narrowly missing the five year old in the back seat.
On Thursday, October 8, Belgal picked up his child from school and stopped at a McDonald’s for an after-school snack. As they pulled up into their home in the northern Manhattan neighborhood of Marble Hill, a mob of masked agents in plain clothes swarmed the car, aiming their guns directly at the 28-year-old father. One smashed the driver’s side window and began shooting into the vehicle. Oscar suffered a bullet wound to the neck and was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital.
Protesters gathered outside of the hospital that evening, calling for justice for Belgal, for Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to be fired, and for ICE to leave New York City. NYPD erected barricades to disperse the crowd, brutalizing protestors—including Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier—and arresting five.
After being declared “stable” the following day, Belgal was transferred to a segregated unit at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, awaiting deportation. The bullet remains lodged in his neck, leaving the left side of his face entirely numb and his hearing impaired. He is reportedly receiving only ibuprofen for the pain.
A quiet ICE surge
In January of this year, the working class rose up against Operation Metro Surge and forced federal hooligans out of Minneapolis through a citywide general strike involving tens of thousands. The strength of organization, communication, and neighborhood defense networks terrified the ruling class, and forced Trump and infamous former ICE chief Bovino into a partial retreat. ICE arrests in Minnesota plummeted to fewer than 250 per month from March through July, sending the state’s ranking from fourth-highest nationwide in January to thirty-second.
However, the Trump administration simply shifted tactics, moving away from the provocative, high-profile raids that sparked mass anger and organization in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis. They have instead quietly ramped up their “normal” operations, everywhere all at once, resulting in record-high apprehensions throughout the summer. ICE arrests soared above 50,000 in just the month of August. In NYC alone, ICE arrested nearly 4,000 people over the summer.
Parents are being arrested in front of their children in their own homes, in Emergency Rooms, and at traffic lights; leaving church, at nightclubs, and outside polling stations. Desperate children are left pleading with federal agents not to tear their families apart. In June, ICE thugs seized five people at two laundromat locations in Madison, WI. The owner of the laundromat chain said “they were having a heyday beating up on a kid.”
Most are being charged with “violating civil immigration laws,” meaning that they are arrested for the only “crime” of crossing the border. In fact, ICE arrests of people with no criminal history have climbed exponentially in this period. And despite “sanctuary laws” in Democratic strongholds like California, Illinois, and New York, ICE has pressed ahead with their raids, undeterred by toothless legislation.
This has nothing to do with the reactionary slogans of “fighting crime,” and everything to do with scapegoating workers who happen to have been born on the other side of the border to distract and divide the working class.
We’re headed to the midterms amid high gas prices, low wages, and soaring rent, utility bills, and unemployment. It only serves Trump and the rest of the Epstein class to shift the blame to “migrants” and away from the real culprits: the disastrous Iran war, capitalist economic crisis, and private ownership of society’s resources by a tiny handful of billionaires who keep getting richer while the rest of us get poorer.
How to fight back—and how not to
Following Oscar Belgal’s bloody arrest, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani publicly called ICE a “terrorist organization that must be expelled from NYC and be abolished.” He said he spent hours on the phone with Donald Trump demanding Belgal’s release and ICE’s withdrawal from New York City. Unsurprisingly, as with his earlier request for the federal government to arrest Netanyahu, pleading with Trump yielded no results.
It should come as no surprise that the bourgeois state has no intention of removing ICE from New York City—or from any city, for that matter. Federal and state forces of repression exist to defend capitalist rule and discipline the working class. Minneapolis shows that the only way to kick ICE out is through a mass militant mobilization of the working class. This would directly clash with the interests of the Democratic Party and the rest of the ruling class.
New York is home to millions of workers, including 3.1 million immigrants, with an average population density of 29,300 people per square mile. New Yorkers vastly outnumber the 20,000 ICE agents in the entire country, and there is already a strong mood of opposition to these gangsters. Provided with resolute leadership and organization, the basis exists for a campaign to kick ICE out of NYC for good.
During Zohran’s mayoral campaign, the NYC-DSA mobilized over 100,000 field organizers to knock on 3 million doors. He should have been leaning on this force as the backbone of an independent working-class party and movement. A real fight against the billionaires and their repressive apparatus must begin with an uncompromising class-struggle outlook: recognizing that the working class’s interests are diametrically opposed to the ruling class’s, and boldly adopting an “us versus them” stance.
Unfortunately, Mamdani has, so far, not opted for this strategy. Instead, he is increasingly trying to maneuver within a political establishment committed to preserving the existing economic and political order by any means necessary.
Following the violent police repression of anti-ICE protestors in New York, calls to remove the billionaire Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch are gaining steam among a section of Zohran supporters and DSA members. Mamdani’s response was shameful: “Jessica Tisch is the police commissioner. I have no plans to change that.” He continued to defend her, explaining that she has a great record of “lowering crime across our city.”
Zohran’s strategy has led him to make more and more concessions to the billionaires who want to keep someone they trust in charge of the police. Hochul made this clear when she said that Tisch’s presence will help show President Donald Trump that the city is “in the right hands.”
Tisch is a faithful representative of the ruling class, a billionaire heiress, and a self-described “proud Zionist.” Playing by the rules of bourgeois politics and trying to make friends with such ruling-class creatures will not win any meaningful concessions. Even relatively mild proposals like the pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes have been blocked by the capitalist courts; let alone sweeping programs like fast and free buses, free universal childcare, or affordable groceries for all. Charisma and “smart governance” won’t win reforms; mass mobilization and strike action will.