On October 2, off-duty NYPD Detective Jose Mercedes was walking near Rochambeau Avenue and East 208th Street in the Bronx when two illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic jumped him in a chain-snatching robbery. They stabbed him seven times.

Governor Kathy Hochul said nothing.

Six days later, on October 8, ICE agents in Marble Hill attempted to arrest Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old illegal immigrant with a grand larceny conviction, multiple arrests for assault, robbery, and drug possession, and ties to the Trinitarios street gang. Belgal rammed two federal vehicles and drove toward officers with a 5-year-old in the back seat. Agents fired seven rounds. Belgal survived.

Hochul found the cameras fast.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin went on Fox News and laid the contrast out flat. "Not a word was said. Not a word was said by the mayor. Not a word was said by the governor," Mullin said, referring to the silence after Detective Mercedes was stabbed. "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 shooting of a reputed gang member — and suddenly Hochul was suggesting federal agents were terrorizing New York. Mullin called it "absolute hypocrisy."

The two suspects who stabbed Detective Mercedes had both been previously apprehended and released by New York authorities despite active ICE detainer requests — released under the state's sanctuary policies. They fled to Lynn, Massachusetts, where NYPD detectives assigned to the U.S. Marshals Regional Fugitive Task Force tracked them down and arrested them.

So the same sanctuary framework that Hochul defends is what put those two men back on the street to stab a cop. And when the cop got stabbed, she had nothing to say about the policy that made it possible.

Mullin didn't limit his fire to Hochul. He called out what he described as "career sanctuary politicians" across the state — the officials who show up to protest when ICE arrests a violent criminal but go silent when the victims of illegal immigrant crime are wearing badges. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani visited Detective Mercedes at Jacobi Hospital after the stabbing, but his public energy went in a very different direction once the ICE shooting happened. Mullin noted the disparity.

Detective Mercedes was stabbed seven times and survived. He's since been released from the hospital and gave a public update on his condition, reported by Fox News on October 11. His attackers were illegal immigrants who should have been in ICE custody. The system designed to protect them from deportation is the same system that left him bleeding on a Bronx sidewalk.

Hochul's press schedule tells you everything about her priorities. A cop stabbed seven times by illegal immigrants released under her sanctuary policies — silence. A gang member with a fentanyl rap sheet shot by federal agents doing their job — outrage.

Seven stab wounds. Zero press conferences.