By Erika D. Smith | Updated on Oct 10, 2026 at 01:00 PM
When Donald Trump ran for president the first time, he famously declared that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”
Now that one of his administration’s ICE agents has actually shot someone along the northern tip of Manhattan — a man from the Dominican Republic with a criminal record who was in an SUV with his 5-year-old son — it’s far from certain whether Trump’s declaration will hold true for his party in the upcoming midterm elections.
Indeed, rather than trying to avoid a “blue wave” by Democrats, the Trump administration seems to be going out of its way to remind voters exactly why so many of them don’t like Republicans’ hardline, haphazard and often violent approach to immigration enforcement.
In addition to the shooting in New York, ICE has reportedly launched a new 45-day operation in California, which Governor Gavin Newsom has called a “ campaign of fear .” Immigration advocates across the state say they’ve seen a “ surge ” of agents, though Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Friday denied such a thing is happening.
“We’re not ramping up anything,” he snapped at reporters. “We’re doing our job every day. That’s all we do.”
That Mullin sounds defensive is understandable. Trump appointed him earlier this year to repair the Department of Homeland Security’s terrible reputation after a series of aggressive immigration enforcement operations left two Americans dead in Minneapolis. Since then, Mullin has been trying to carry out the politically impossible task of pleasing Trump’s right-wing base by deporting as many immigrants as possible (often as cruelly as possible), while also pleasing the broader electorate by making it seem as if only immigrants with criminal records are being targeted.
It’s not working.
According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll , 59% of Americans say they now disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration. Among Latino Americans, the voters most likely to determine whether Republicans maintain control of Congress in November, 67% say his administration has “gone too far” on enforcement, according to a NBC News/Telemundo poll .
Immigration used to be one of Trump’s strongest issues. A big reason he was elected was to stem the flow of migrants at the southern border. But the escalating arrests of immigrants who are not “the worst of the worst” — including some who are being deported to countries on continents where they’ve never lived — have been enough to sour public opinion.
Even among rural Americans, historically a core part of Trump’s base, there’s a split. Roughly a third now say the administration’s policies restricting legal immigration and deporting undocumented immigrants have harmed their communities.
“I understand getting rid of the rapists and the murderers,” one 37-year-old farmer and Trump voter told Associated Press-KFF pollsters . “But all the people that fell in between, that really weren’t doing nothing but taking care of their family.”
On Friday, Mullin leaned into this distinction, out of political expediency if nothing else. He repeatedly called Oscar Belgal, the 28-year-old who took a bullet below his left ear, a “thug” and “the worst of the worst.”
“This individual is a threat to our community,” Mullin insisted. “We had a detainer on him. He was on probation.”
ICE says that Belgal is in the US illegally, is a member of the Trinitarios gang and that agents sought his arrest because he has “indirect or direct knowledge” of a shooting involving an off-duty Customs and Border Protection agent in 2025.
New York officials laid out a slightly less colorful history, saying Belgal had been arrested on a robbery charge in 2023, later pleaded guilty to grand larceny and had been sentenced to probation. More recently, he was arrested on a drug charge, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
Either way, it appears Mullin is right that Belgal is no upstanding member of society. But the question is whether that justifies the tactics used by ICE agents — especially given that this is merely the latest in a string of shootings of immigrants during traffic stops across the US.
Details are still emerging, but what seems clear is that, on Thursday afternoon in the Marble Hill neighborhood between Manhattan and the Bronx, Belgal pulled his SUV into a parking spot and was approached by immigration officers in plainclothes and driving unmarked vehicles. At least one agent, wearing a reflective vest typically used by construction workers, had a gun drawn. When Belgal started to drive forward, the agent shot him.
Mullin said that ICE didn’t know a child was in the SUV at the time. But New York Governor Kathy Hochul suggested the agents should’ve known. “Any trained law enforcement officer knows how easily that could have ended in tragedy,” she said in a statement.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has called the shooting “unconscionable.”
Given Belgal’s criminal history, Hochul and Mamdani probably won’t be able to garner much sympathy for him among voters considering whether to cast another ballot for Republicans in the midterms. But the violence that occurred, and the effect it has no doubt had on Belgal’s son, still serve as a reminder of the many problems most Americans have with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
And it’s why Mullin’s attempt to blame New York’s “sanctuary” policies, which restrict the work local law enforcement agencies can do with federal immigration authorities, for what happened may fall unusually flat. After all, just two days before ICE shot Belgal, Mamdani announced that crime in the city hit a new low, with the largest drop in the Bronx. The shooting carried out by ICE was one of only a few hundred this year.
“The pretext of ICE is, in their words, ‘to keep this country safe.’ How is it keeping anyone safe to have … individuals wearing construction vests in masks with long guns?” Mamdani asked while addressing reporters on Thursday night . “Residents have no idea if these are law enforcement agents or if they are simply attacking someone on the street.”
In the midterms, voters might not be as willing to overlook that as Trump once believed.
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