DSA Asks Mamdani for One Thing He Can Do and One He Can't

The organization that elected him mayor is now publicly telling Zohran Mamdani what to do, and he is publicly declining. Days after an ICE agent shot a 28-year-old man in Marble Hill, the Democratic Socialists of America — the group Mamdani has long called his political home — demanded the mayor fire NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and use every tool he has to push federal immigration agents out of the five boroughs.

City Hall's answer came back short. "Jessica Tisch is the police commissioner and there are no plans to change that," mayoral spokesperson Dora Pekec told Gothamist, which first reported the local chapter's ultimatum on Oct. 9.

It is the sharpest break yet between the new mayor and the activists who powered his campaign, and only half of what they are asking is in his hands. Hiring and firing a police commissioner is a mayor's call. Expelling ICE is not: it is a federal agency, and a police commissioner has no authority over it, a point Gothamist flagged in its reporting and one that readers attached to the DSA post on X noted as well.

What Happened in Marble Hill

According to Gothamist, ICE agents shot and arrested a 28-year-old man in Marble Hill on Thursday night, Oct. 8. City officials and eyewitnesses identified him as Oscar Belgal and said he was in a car with his 5-year-old son when he was shot. Federal officials said Belgal was being held Friday at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Protests followed, along with arrests. Tisch and Mamdani held a press conference that night at which the commissioner laid out Belgal's criminal history — a decision that has become its own flashpoint on the left.

Mamdani said he spent two hours on the phone with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and President Trump and failed to secure Belgal's release. Mullin said Friday that Trump had offered to release Belgal into NYPD custody and that Mamdani refused. That account is one-sided; Gothamist reported it without a response from the mayor, and it remains unconfirmed by anyone on the city's side.

The Demands, and Who Is Making Them

The NYC chapter moved first, with a Friday press release calling ICE "a terrorist agency that must be expelled from New York City and abolished." Chapter co-chair Grace Mausser accused the NYPD of assisting the federal operation, pointing to video of officers shoving bystanders as an unmarked car drove away, and she faulted Tisch for airing Belgal's record at the Thursday presser. On the commissioner's tenure, Mausser was blunt: "She's had 10 months. We've tried to give space, but we would like to see results at this point."

Then the national organization escalated. A statement posted to DSA's national X account around Oct. 11, attributed to the National Political Committee — its top leadership body between conventions — and the group's Abolition Commission, demands that the mayor fire Tisch and use every power available to him to drive ICE out of the city. The statement, as captured, also calls for abolishing the NYPD's Strategic Response Group and Community Response Team and describes the Oct. 8 shooting in terms accusing ICE of attempted murder. DSA has not confirmed the text to us, and we have not independently verified it against the organization's own website.

Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Democratic congressional nominee and Mamdani ally who was at the scene and who video shows being pushed to the ground by police, has called on Tisch to step down.

The Mayor's Office Pushes Back

Mamdani spokesperson Sam Raskin defended the department's handling of the night, telling Gothamist the ICE convoy left the hospital at dangerously high speed. NYPD spokesperson Brad Weekes said the Strategic Response Group did not respond to the Marble Hill protests at all. Richard Esposito, a police analyst and former NYPD deputy commissioner, told the outlet that clearing roads for federal agents is standard practice — a direct contradiction of the collaboration charge.

Tisch was appointed in 2024 by former Mayor Eric Adams, after a run of commissioner resignations amid corruption allegations, and Mamdani kept her. DSA has been unhappy with her for months over low-level-offense enforcement, the gang database and SRG deployments. Mamdani, for his part, campaigned on disbanding the SRG.

The New York Post published a piece on Oct. 11 headlined, in part, that DSA demands Mamdani fire Tisch as socialists turn on the mayor over the ICE shooting. Gothamist described the dispute more cautiously, as the biggest clash to date rather than a rupture.

Watch for the mayor's first extended press availability since Thursday, the NYPD review he promised of the preceding 24 hours, the custody and charging status of Belgal and the protest arrestees, any released body-worn or bystander video, and whether DHS offers its own account of the shooting. Watch, too, for whether the city chapter takes any formal action against a mayor it just spent a year electing.