Safety First: Why National Security Must Be the Top Midterm Issue

National security and public safety should be the central question facing American voters this November. Affordability, energy costs, education, and the broader economy all matter. None of them can be enjoyed, however, if citizens cannot walk to a grocery store, board a train, or live in their neighborhoods without calculating the risk of violence from people the system has already identified as dangerous. Safety is not one issue among many. It is the foundation on which every other public good rests.

The consequences of treating public safety as secondary have already been measured in lives.

A Pattern of Releases

On August 22, 2025, 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska boarded a Charlotte Area Transit System light-rail train after finishing her shift. A Ukrainian refugee who had fled the war in her home country, she sat quietly in front of Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr. Minutes later, Brown stood and stabbed her multiple times from behind, including in the neck. She died at the scene. Surveillance footage of the unprovoked attack circulated widely and drew national attention.

Brown’s criminal history was extensive. Court records and subsequent reporting documented roughly fourteen prior arrests in Mecklenburg County, including a conviction for armed robbery for which he served more than five years in prison, along with charges for felony larceny and breaking and entering. In January 2025 he was arrested after a 911 call involving claims of mind control; he was released on a written promise to appear under cashless bail practices then in effect. Family members later described his long-standing mental illness and stated he should not have been free. The case prompted North Carolina lawmakers to pass House Bill 307, known as Iryna’s Law, which restricted cashless bail for many violent and repeat offenders and required greater scrutiny of criminal history and mental-health risks in pretrial decisions. Democratic Governor Josh Stein signed the measure in October 2025.

The same dynamic appeared in New York City on October 8, 2026. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers conducted a targeted enforcement operation in the Marble Hill section of the Bronx to arrest Oscar Belgal (also identified in some records as Bengal or Bergal), a 28-year-old Dominican national present in the country illegally. Belgal had a prior conviction for fourth-degree grand larceny for which he was on probation, along with prior arrests for robbery, assault, drug sales, and weapons possession. Federal officials stated he had associations with the Trinitarios street gang and was of interest in connection with the earlier shooting of a Customs and Border Protection officer. During the encounter, Belgal was shot in the neck while inside a vehicle that also contained his five-year-old child. The child was not injured. DHS and ICE maintained that Belgal refused commands, accelerated the vehicle, and attempted to flee or strike law-enforcement vehicles.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani responded by condemning the shooting as an “outrage,” calling ICE “rotten to its core,” and renewing his call to abolish the agency. He spent roughly two hours on the telephone with President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin attempting to secure Belgal’s release. According to Mullin, the administration offered to transfer Belgal into the custody of the New York Police Department if local authorities wished to pursue charges; Mamdani declined, citing the absence of an open local warrant and the city’s sanctuary policies. Governor Kathy Hochul also contacted federal officials, expressed outrage on behalf of New Yorkers, and urged a temporary halt to ICE operations in the state. DHS has reported that New York refused to honor 14,916 ICE detainers between January 20, 2025, and mid-September 2026. Those ignored detainers were associated with 47,750 criminal charges and convictions, including 96 homicides, 448 sexual assaults, and thousands of assaults, robberies, and weapons offenses. Later data placed the cumulative number of refused detainers above 16,000.

These episodes illustrate a broader pattern in jurisdictions that have adopted sanctuary policies, cashless bail, and limited cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Progressive prosecutors and judges in multiple cities have repeatedly released individuals with violent records who later reoffended. When local authorities decline to honor detainers or hold defendants pending transfer, the practical result is that people already charged with serious crimes return to the streets.

Candidates and Ideology

The same approach is visible among candidates seeking higher office. Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialists of America member who became mayor of New York City, has repeatedly called for the abolition of ICE and has used executive authority to tighten sanctuary restrictions on information-sharing and cooperation. Kathy Hochul has signed legislation limiting local participation in federal immigration enforcement while maintaining that New York is “not a sanctuary for criminals.”

In Michigan, Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has drawn scrutiny over associations and debate performance. During an October 8, 2026, debate with Republican Mike Rogers, El-Sayed declined to say whether Iran poses a greater threat to the United States than Israel, describing the comparison as a “ridiculous hypothetical” and stating that both nations have “proven dangerous in their own way.” Rogers pressed him on campaign donors and family connections linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and related organizations. El-Sayed pushed back, stated that he has condemned the October 7 attacks, and told Rogers not to “make stuff up,” but the exchanges were widely described as evasive on the specific question of clear, forceful condemnation of designated terrorist groups such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Reporting has documented that El-Sayed’s half-sister previously posted that the family “has long been” Muslim Brotherhood; that his mother once worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency (later designated by the Treasury Department for supporting terrorism); that his father-in-law has ties to the Islamic Society of North America (named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial); and that certain donors have included a former spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Egyptian political party. Fact-checks have found no evidence of a personal formal pledge of allegiance by El-Sayed himself, yet the pattern of associations, donations, and reluctance to issue unambiguous condemnations has remained a central campaign issue.

The incompatibility of classical Sharia-based legal systems with the U.S. Constitution is not a matter of private religious practice, which the First Amendment protects. It is a matter of public law. Classical Sharia rejects equal protection for women and non-Muslims, criminalizes apostasy and blasphemy, and subordinates due process and free speech to religious authority. The Muslim Brotherhood’s own strategic documents have described a long-term effort to advance its vision inside Western societies. Voters are entitled to ask whether candidates who equivocate on these questions, or who maintain close associations with organizations tied to that vision, will treat the Constitution as the supreme law of the land.

What the Progressive Platform Has Promised

The Democratic Socialists of America platform, which has influenced a rising cohort of Democratic candidates and officeholders, explicitly calls for abolishing ICE, ending most immigration detention and deportation, and ultimately abolishing police and prisons. Many elected Democrats have voted against funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection or have supported measures that constrain federal immigration enforcement. Open-border and sanctuary policies, combined with reduced local policing capacity, produce measurable effects: higher numbers of criminal non-citizens released despite detainers, and higher numbers of repeat offenders cycling through the system.

Affordability remains a legitimate concern for households facing high prices. It is not, however, independent of public order. The first duty of government is to protect the lives and property of its citizens. When that duty is subordinated to ideology—whether through non-cooperation with immigration enforcement, repeated releases of violent offenders, or candidates who will not clearly reject terrorist organizations and theocratic legal systems—the practical result is a less safe country. Citizens can debate tax rates, housing supply, and energy policy. They cannot do so if the streets and transit systems are governed by the revolving door.

This November the choice is concrete. Voters can support candidates and parties that enforce existing law, secure the border, keep violent offenders incarcerated, and treat the Constitution as non-negotiable. Or they can accept the continuation of policies that have already produced the deaths of people like Iryna Zarutska and the release of individuals with the records of Oscar Belgal. Safety is not optional. The Constitution is not optional. Those should be the terms of the midterm election.