Thousands of protesters took to the streets of the Big Apple calling for the abolishment of ICE and the firing of NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, a day after a criminal illegal alien was shot in the Bronx Thursday.
As many as 5,000 furious demonstrators gathered and marched throughout lower Manhattan Friday afternoon chanting “Abolish ICE,” “ICE out of New York” and “Stop the deportations” in response to the shooting of illegal migrant Oscar Belgal, 28, in the Bronx Thursday.
Among the sea of protesters were activist Chelsea Manning, city advocate Jumaane Williams and lefty congress-hopefuls Brad Lander and Micah Lasher.
One of the demonstrators, Ilyana, who declined to give her last name, told The Post she has “been protesting all my life” but “this is some next level s–t.”
“They are ripping people from their families, shooting people in front of their children, and no one is doing anything about it,” she fumed.
Belgal, a Dominican Republic native, was shot in his car in Marble Hill while Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were trying to nab him over his alleged ties to a blood-thirsty gang that has wreaked havoc in the Big Apple for decades.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed that seven rounds were fired by at least one ICE agent but made it clear that the “NYPD had no involvement in the federal operation prior to the shooting.”
A 5-year-old child, believed by police to be Belgal’s son, was inside the vehicle at the time of the shooting and was unharmed, Tisch said.
Throughout the hours-long protest, chants of “Fire Tisch” could be heard by the furious protesters.
“Yesterday, a New Yorker was shot in the head in front of his five-year-old child,” Murad Awawdeh, CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, shouted into the growing crowd of protesters at Foley Square.
Chair of the Manhattan Democratic Party Kyle Ishmael, 41, said he’s “marching because we are a country and a nation, a city and a state of immigrants.”
“That’s what we do as New Yorkers until we abolish ICE,” Ishmael said, adding that “no one deserves to be shot. Especially when they’re in their car with their five year old child.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani slammed the shooting of “a New Yorker by ICE agents in Marble Hill” at a late-night press conference Thursday.
But Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin pushed back at Hizzoner’s description of Belgal as a “New Yorker.”
“You’re going to call that a New Yorker?! I think that’s a far cry,” Mullin said Thursday.
Mullin said that Belgal “was known to be affiliated with” the Trinitarios, a violent street gang that started as a protective band of Dominican inmates at Rikers Island in the early 1990s and has since grown into a multinational crime empire with footholds in the Bronx and upper Manhattan.
The NYPD confirmed to The Post that Belgal has two prior arrests in the city — one for robbery in 2023, in which he pleaded guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny and received five years’ probation, and one for criminal sale of a controlled substance in 2025, which is still pending.
Federal officials said Beglal had a detainer on him and was out on probation.
