ICE shooting of New York man in car with 5-year-old sparks protests
Mayor Zohran Mamdani says agents fired at a car with a child inside; DHS says the man was an arrest target.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent has shot a man in New York City as he sat in a car with a small child.
Citing an “unconscionable and incredibly serious situation,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Thursday that early reports indicated that agents had surrounded the man and a five-year-old child in his car in the Marble Hill neighbourhood before firing multiple rounds.
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The child was believed to be physically unharmed, the mayor added as he said that he has called President Donald Trump and would demand that he end all ICE enforcement actions in the city.
“I will not stand by while ICE agents terrorise our communities,” Mamdani said.
Protests followed on Thursday evening, with demonstrators saying the shooting illustrated the dangers of Trump’s immigration crackdown, and some scuffles with police breaking out.
“We are heartbroken and enraged,” said City Council Member Carmen De La Rosa, who represents the area.
Speaking at the scene in the evening, Mamdani said:
“Today’s shooting is only further devastating confirmation of what we have long known, which is that ICE operates with impunity, that they sow chaos and terror across our country, that they have killed far more of our neighbours than they could ever have claimed to save,” Mamdani said as he spoke in the evening from the scene of the incident, demanding the agency “must be abolished”.
Governor Kathy Hochul said she spoke with Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Thursday night.
“I expressed outrage on behalf of New Yorkers and urged them to halt ICE enforcement operations in New York,” she said in a statement.
“I also asked that any body camera footage of the shooting be released to the public so we can establish the facts and get to the truth.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said ICE officers were conducting a “targeted enforcement operation” in the Bronx at about 4pm to arrest a 28-year-old man Dominican national – identified as Oscar Belgal by city police – with a criminal conviction.
It said an officer “discharged his weapon” and “the criminal illegal alien” was injured. The DHS added that the incident remains under investigation.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Belgal was pulling into a parking space when a federal officer in plainclothes approached with gun drawn, followed by another federal officer who also wasn’t in uniform.
Belgal started to pull the car forward, and then at least one of the officers fired seven rounds, hitting the man below his left ear, Tisch said, confirming that the child was unharmed and with a relative.
According to a statement by the New York Police Department, the man remains conscious and is receiving medical treatment at a nearby hospital.
ICE under scrutiny
The shooting comes after months of mounting criticism of the agency.
In January, federal immigration agents shot dead two US citizens in Minneapolis: Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, killed by an ICE agent on January 7, and Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, shot by a US border agent.
After Good’s killing, Trump officials labelled her a “domestic terrorist” even as video of the shooting cast doubt on claims she had tried to run over an agent.
The federal government removed local authorities from the investigation, rejected calls for a civil rights probe, and sent hundreds more agents to Minnesota, bringing the total to 3,000, as protests spread to hundreds of US cities.
Trump blamed the shift in American opinion about the immigration agency on unfair media coverage, urging DHS and ICE to publicise the “violent criminals” they arrest.
ICE has been tasked with a target of one million deportations a year.
The agency doubled in size to more than 22,000 agents by January and is now the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency, with about $75bn allocated to it over four years under a tax bill Trump signed last year.
