DHS Secretary Blames Mamdani—and the Man Shot With His 5-Year-Old

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin blamed Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Thursday shooting of an unarmed man on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s words rather than the agent’s actions.

“I wanna push back on a couple things. The Mayor yesterday did a press conference.…He said that ICE ‘has killed more of our neighbors than they claim to have saved.’ That’s a direct quote from the Mayor last night,” Mullin said with anger in his voice. “Just for a record here: Right now ICE has in detention 258 illegals that are wanted for murder charges just in New York alone.… [the mayor’s] words are dangerous, and incite hostility. It doesn’t help.”

Mullin points to Mamdani’s view on ICE—which the vast majority of Americans share—as harmful rather than the violent actions of ICE itself. On Thursday, ICE shot and wounded 28-year-old Dominican man Oscar Belgal in the neck while he was driving with a 5-year-old child in the backseat in New York City’s Marble Hill, discharging seven rounds at Belgal. ICE claims he “weaponized” his car against them after they boxed him in. Mamdani unsuccessfully negotiated for Belgal’s release.

According to Mamdani and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, Belgal was rushed by plainclothed ICE officers with their guns already drawn.

“They wore construction vests and masks that concealed their faces. There was no reasonable way to identify them as ICE agents,” Mamdani said.

Mullin’s comments were not well received.

“His words are dangerous and incite hostility—says the man in charge of the masked, armed, thugs violating Constitutional rights, and attacking and killing people in the streets,” Executive Director of the Campaign for New York Health Melanie D’Arrigo wrote on X.

At least 40 people have been shot by ICE since the start of Trump’s second term, with 11 of those being fatal.

Nothing Mullin or anyone from DHS leadership says should be taken seriously. Whatever statistics Mullin spouts are easily outweighed by the images Americans have seen of masked, disguised federal agents roaming their streets, terrorizing and killing their neighbors. ICE agents dressed in construction gear ambushing a man and firing at him seven times with a child in the car in the middle of the day is absurd, and Mullin has no real justification for it—leading him to deflect to Mamdani.

President Donald Trump is still going after Federal Reserve Commissioner Lisa Cook.

In a presidential memo Wednesday, Trump announced that he’d set up a committee to oversee an investigation into whether Cook had made false statements in connection to one or more mortgage agreements.

“As President, it is my job to ensure the laws are faithfully executed, including by firing subordinates who cannot be trusted to tell the truth and follow the law,” he wrote.

Of course, Cook isn’t really Trump’s subordinate. In June, the Supreme Court blocked Cook’s removal, finding that the government had not afforded her due process. The ruling temporarily preserved the Federal Reserve’s independence.

But that hasn’t stopped Trump from trying to oust Cook. In August, White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino informed her that the Trump administration was once again “considering” removing her from her position.

It’s been more than a year since Trump first claimed that Cook—the first Black woman on the Federal Reserve board—had committed mortgage fraud by having two primary residences. Cook refused to step down and sued, stating that “President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so.”

Notably, Trump’s own mortgage agreements appear to match the same criteria his Department of Justice has used to go after Cook, as well as Trump’s other perceived enemies, former Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell, Senator Adam Schiff, and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump said the new committee will meet next month to “consider the evidence and allegations against Governor Cook.” Cook has not been charged with any crime.

Republican Representative Mike Collins cannot seem to rise above his staffers’ Nazi reputations.

The Georgia representative practically drowned under reports of his team’s ties to extremism during his first debate against Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff Thursday, unable to bat away the various white supremacist connections within his orbit.

“Mike Collins has brought dishonor to our state through his personal bigotry and his widely documented ties to white nationalists,” Ossoff said in his opening remarks.

At least four of Collins’s former staffers and aides have been accused of extremist affiliations. They include Collins’s former chief of staff Kip Talley; former digital director William Paul (the son of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul); and a former intern, Preston Parra, who has frequently shared Ku Klux Klan and Nazi images to his personal social media account, including an image of himself clad in the white supremacist group’s hooded uniform.

“You hired half the Third Reich to staff your office,” Ossoff remarked at one point.

But the hate bled even closer to home: CNN revealed in July that Collins’s son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, was a white supremacist influencer who had shared vitriolic, extremist messaging across the internet.

Collins, however, could not seem to confront the allegation head-on without blaming his Democratic opponent.

“That’s my family. The craziness that Jon Ossoff has been spewing out there—I actually had a person put in jail this weekend because he not only wanted to kill my son-in-law but he wanted to kill me,” Collins said when asked directly about his son-in-law’s social media activity. “I’ve condemned racism, antisemitism, hate. I don’t care where the source is, and I tell him that too. It’s wrong.”

Collins then made a false equivalence between his son-in-law’s hateful messaging and Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, complaining that Ossoff had not condemned either.

Ossoff’s response: “Imagine running for the U.S. Senate while neo-Nazi propaganda is disseminated to an audience of millions from your home. That’s Mike Collins.”

The Democratic incumbent also railed against Collins’s own track record, recalling when Collins “cheered on” a group of young men that harassed a Black woman at the University of Mississippi with monkey sounds, and that Collins himself had “amplified neo-Nazi propaganda.”

“If John Lewis were marching today,” Ossoff said, “Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.”

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent at the scene who opened fire into a vehicle with a five-year-old child Thursday has an alleged history of making violent arrests.

In a violent incident Thursday afternoon, plainclothes federal immigration agents fired at least seven rounds into a car in Marble Hill, a residential neighborhood of New York City. Inside the vehicle sat Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old Bronx resident and a five-year-old boy, believed to be his son, Gothamist reported. Belgal was shot in the neck and hospitalized, and the child was reportedly unharmed.

Wired identified Brendan Cuni as one of the ICE officers present during the incident. Photographs from the scene showed Cuni in the aftermath of the shooting, wearing a high-visibility yellow construction vest and carrying an AR-15–style rifle. He was disguised as a construction worker, and was in no way identifiable as a federal agent.

Cuni has been named in multiple lawsuits alleging violent arrests in New York City and beyond, Wired reported. Last October, a Bronx man claimed that Cuni tripped him hard enough to crack a tooth and used a Taser on him six times while he was already handcuffed on the ground. In November, Cuni was involved in an arrest in Queens where ICE agents reportedly tackled and shocked a man with a Taser. In December, Cuni was deployed in Minneapolis as part of Operation Metro Surge. Activists allege that he was among officers who forced a pregnant woman to the ground, though this was not confirmed by Wired. During his stint in the Midwest, prosecutors charged a man with assaulting Cuni, but a judge found there was “weak” evidence, and no other agents could corroborate Cuni’s story. In at least three separate cases, judges have found issues with Cuni’s statements or arrest paperwork.

Protesters gathered outside of the local hospital where Belgal was taken. “Don’t forget, don’t forgive, Brendan Cuni shot a kid!” they chanted, according to a video shared on X by The Intercept’s Noah Horowitz.

At a press conference Thursday night, Democratic Representative Adriano Espaillat said that he’d attempted to visit Belgal in the hospital but had been blocked by federal agents. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that ICE had taken Belgal into custody and that his discussions with President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to have him released had been “unsuccessful.”

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that Belgal had a previous criminal conviction, multiple prior arrests, and ties to a violent gang.

Navi Pillay, the winner of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, took an immediate shot at President Trump after she learned she had won the award Friday.

The former South African judge and United Nations human rights high commissioner gave an impromptu speech at Nuremberg Court in Germany, where she was attending an academic and legal conference after she received the news.

“Thank you very much. If you clap a little bit more I may share this prize with Trump,” she said. The room erupted in laughter.

Trump has been practically begging for a Nobel Peace Prize for years, especially since it was awarded to then-President Barack Obama in 2009. Last year, he phoned Norway’s Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg “out of the blue” to ask about the possibility of acquiring the prize, using tariffs as a cover for their discussion.

“Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS,” Trump said in another message to Norway Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”

Last October, Trump told the press “They gave it to Obama for absolutely destroying our country,” during an Oval Office meeting with Finnish President Alexander Stubb. “My election was much more important.”

This year, Trump has pretended to stop caring about the award altogether, although that may change when he gets wind of Pillay’s comments.

“Just to be at this venue.… Your applause means a great deal to me. You don’t want to receive an award, prize, or anything, unless the public agrees that you deserve this. So that’s how I appreciate your applause today,” Pillay said in her remarks. “Being a lawyer and a judge, I still want to verify [this announcement]. I think it’s very appropriate that I’m with friends and colleagues, all of whom support human rights. The last thing I did [was] the delivery of the report on Gaza naming what’s happening there as genocide.”