Homeland Security Director Markwayne Mullin accused Gov. Kathy Hochul of hypocrisy for attacking ICE over a Bronx shooting while staying silent when an NYPD detective was stabbed by illegal immigrants.
New York Post reporting captured Mullin on Fox News with Shannon Bream on Sunday laying out the contrast in plain terms. ICE agents had tried to arrest Oscar Belga in the Bronx on Thursday. Belga left with non-life-threatening wounds while trying to flee. Agents fired into a vehicle that also contained a 5-year-old child during the targeted operation in Marble Hill.
Hochul answered by accusing federal agents of “intentional infliction of pain, of chaos, [and] of trying to terrorize neighborhoods.” She has demanded ICE stay out of the city. Mullin said that reaction looked nothing like her posture after an off-duty NYPD detective was knifed in the same borough.
Detective Jose Mercedes was stabbed seven times on Oct. 2. He has since left the hospital. Mullin said no press conference followed, no street protests, and no loud defense of the officer from the governor’s orbit.
Mullin put the double standard directly:
"They were completely silent,"
He continued:
"When an NYPD officer got stabbed, no one did a press conference, no one was outside protesting, no one said a word,"
Then came the ICE arrest attempt. Protesters and political heat appeared for Belga, a man Mullin described as having an extensive criminal background who had already evaded agents the month before.
Mullin grouped Belga with the two men named in the Mercedes stabbing case, Dangelo Rafael Jean Caraballo and Sneider Mejia Bautista. He said all three came from the Dominican Republic, carried long criminal records, and should have been deported.
On Belga specifically, Mullin said the man arrived illegally three years earlier and still faced a stack of serious charges: four counts of felony robbery, two of felony assault, two felony drug charges, two felony larceny charges, misdemeanor assault, and weapons possession. Mullin also flagged alleged gang ties while arguing ICE was in New York to do a job the state would not finish.
He asked who would remove the offenders local leaders keep releasing. That question lands in a state where Hochul’s earlier pardon move already undercut a major immigration enforcement fight in the courts.
Mullin summed up his view of the selective outrage:
"It’s absolute hypocrisy."
He added that agents were there to “do a job” and get criminals off the street. The same neighborhood that saw Mercedes cut open then saw political fury aimed at the officers trying to take Belga into custody.
A spokesperson for Hochul’s office pushed back Sunday and dismissed the charge that she had ignored the Oct. 2 attack on Detective Mercedes. The statement reached The Post the same day Mullin spoke.
The office said:
"Governor Hochul has tremendous respect for the hardworking men and women of the New York City Police Department and the crucial role they play in driving down crime and making New York safer,"
It continued that she would keep funding law enforcement and strengthening laws, then pivoted hard:
"Rather than politicizing this terrible incident, the Governor will continue to prioritize the real work that supports our law enforcement, including investing record amounts in law enforcement funding, strengthening laws to keep our communities safe, and protecting New Yorkers from rogue ICE agents."
Respect for the NYPD in a press statement does not erase the public posture Hochul took toward the ICE operation. She framed a targeted arrest of a man with a long alleged record as neighborhood terror. She did not match that volume when a detective was stabbed seven times blocks away in the same Bronx storyline.
Retired officers have already shown how raw the trust gap can get when Albany Democrats face police audiences, including when Port Authority veterans urged Hochul to stay away from a sensitive Ground Zero observance.
The timeline is tight. Mercedes was attacked Oct. 2. ICE moved on Belga on Thursday in Marble Hill. Mullin went on air Sunday. In between, Hochul’s language about pain, chaos, and terror ran hotter toward federal agents than toward the men accused of carving up a detective.
Belga tried to flee and took non-life-threatening wounds. A child was inside the vehicle when shots were fired. Those facts are serious and deserve a full accounting from ICE. They do not explain why the governor’s public energy rose for the arrest target and stayed flat for the stabbed detective.
Mullin has made immigration enforcement a recurring theme, including separate cases where he has pressed fraud and removal questions against high-profile Democrats such as the allegations he raised around Rep. Ilhan Omar. Here the focus stayed local: three men he said should already have been gone, one wounded detective, and a governor scolding the agency sent to clean up the mess.
Parallel flashpoints keep stacking up nationwide. A recent ICE-related shooting case in Austin produced federal assault charges after another migrant confrontation, another reminder that street violence and immigration enforcement now collide in multiple cities at once.
New York’s pattern is the political choice on display. Officials amplify claims that ICE terrorizes neighborhoods. They go quieter when illegal immigrants with long records are accused of putting a detective in the hospital. Taxpayers and cops live with both outcomes.
Leaders who save their sharpest words for the officers enforcing federal law, not the repeat offenders those officers chase, tell the public exactly whose side they take when the knife comes out.
