NYC mayor faces DSA demand to dismiss police commissioner after ICE shooting
The Democratic Socialists of America urged Mayor Zohran Mamdani to fire Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, accusing the NYPD of aiding ICE following a shooting incident in Marble Hill.
The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has called on Mayor Zohran Mamdani to remove Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot and arrested a 28-year-old man in Marble Hill on Thursday night. The DSA said the NYPD helped ICE agents and mistreated protesters who gathered at the scene, and it demanded that the mayor hold the commissioner accountable.
"ICE is a terrorist agency that must be expelled from New York City and abolished," the DSA said in a press release, adding that Tisch must end NYPD cooperation with ICE or be dismissed.
Mayor’s office spokesperson Dora Pekec responded that there are no plans to replace Tisch and that the administration will review the events of the past 24 hours. A separate mayoral spokesperson, Sam Raskin, said ICE’s convoy left the hospital at a dangerously high speed, creating a risk of injury.
The incident involved ICE agents shooting Oscar Belgal while he was in a car with his five-year-old son; Belgal was taken into custody and later held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. DSA co-chair Grace Mausser cited social-media video showing police officers pushing bystanders aside as an unmarked vehicle departed.
The DSA has previously criticized Tisch’s policies, including aggressive low-level offense enforcement, use of a gang database, and deployment of the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG). NYPD spokesperson Brad Weekes said the SRG was not involved in Thursday’s protests, and former NYPD deputy commissioner Richard Esposito described police road-clearing as standard procedure to allow federal agents to leave a scene safely.
Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier, an ally of the mayor, also called for Tisch’s resignation and the disbanding of the SRG. The mayor has not spoken publicly since a late-night phone call with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and President Donald Trump regarding the detained individual.
The dispute marks the most direct confrontation yet between the mayor and the DSA, the organization that supported his election campaign.