A shooting by federal immigration agents in Manhattan has become the latest flashpoint in the Trump administration’s fight with New York, as Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin blamed the city’s sanctuary policies and Mayor Zohran Mamdani demanded that the agents leave the five boroughs.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers fired at least seven rounds into a car in New York City’s Marble Hill neighborhood on Oct. 8, wounding Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old immigrant from the Dominican Republic, as his 5-year-old son sat in the back seat, according to police.
Federal officials said that Belgal was in the country without authorization and accused him of having gang ties and a criminal record. During a news conference on Oct. 9,
Mullin repeatedly called him a “thug” and “the worst of the worst,” pointing to him as an example of how sanctuary policies, which limit local cooperation with immigration enforcement, make the public “less safe.”
Mullin said the agents did not know a child was in the car, and instead blamed Belgal. "The outrage should be with him endangering a 5-year-old," he said.
The Legal Aid Society, which said Belgal is its client, placed the blame on the agents. The child’s presence in the car when ICE opened fire raises “grave concerns about the reckless endangerment of children and families during immigration enforcement operations,” the group said in a statement.
On Oct. 8, gunfire rang out just after school let out around 4 p.m. in Marble Hill, a largely Latino enclave that belongs to Manhattan but sits on the Bronx mainland. Minutes earlier, residential police cameras showed Belgal parallel parking his gray Honda in front of a fire hydrant, according to New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
A plainclothes ICE officer with his gun drawn walked up to the driver-side window, while a second officer moved toward the front of the car, Tisch said. As Belgal began to pull away, he drove out of the camera’s view. Shortly after, an officer opened fire, hitting Belgal in the neck below his left ear, she said.
Both Tisch and Mamdani said the officers wore nothing identifying them as law enforcement, and that at least one carried a long gun.
"They wore construction vests and masks that concealed their faces. There was no reasonable way to identify them as ICE agents," Mamdani said at a late-night news conference Oct. 8. "School had just gotten out. The street was crowded with families and children."
By the time NYPD officers arrived, Belgal was handcuffed and sitting on the ground, officials said. Police put him in their vehicle, gave him medical aid and took him to a hospital.
Federal officials described the encounter differently. Marcos Charles, acting head of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, said agents had used their vehicles to try to block Belgal during the attempted arrest.
“He then accelerated his vehicle, smashing into two of our government ICE vehicles and then weaponized his vehicle and proceeded to accelerate going towards other officers,” Charles said. Fearing for their own safety and the public’s, the officers “used their training” and opened fire, he said.
No video of the shooting has been made public, though Mullin said the agents wore body cameras and that footage exists. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul urged federal officials to provide “a full and transparent accounting” of the shooting.
Mamdani said he spent two hours on the phone at night with President Donald Trump and Mullin negotiating for Belgal’s release. Instead, he said, ICE “put the man in an unmarked vehicle and whisked him away.”
Mullin said Belgal had since been moved to an immigration detention facility outside New York, but declined to say where. He also gave a different account of the talks, saying Trump had offered to hand Belgal over to the New York Police Department if it would pursue charges against him.
“I shared that with the mayor,” Mullin said. “The mayor once again said, ‘we will not be detaining him,’ wanted us to walk away and allow this dangerous criminal back onto the streets.”
Mamdani, who campaigned on strengthening the city’s sanctuary protections, including getting ICE out of all city facilities and ending any cooperation with it, said he would press Trump to end all ICE enforcement in the city. He “will not stand by while ICE agents terrorize our communities,” he said Thursday night as protests spread after the shooting.
The shooting comes about a month after Mullin announced that Operation Rotten Apple, a monthlong ICE surge across New York, had resulted in more than 2,100 arrests. Mullin cast the operation as necessary because of the state’s new Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, which requires local law enforcement agencies to end 287(g) agreements that let officers be deputized for immigration enforcement.
Mullin has insisted that the agency is focused on arresting criminals. “We pursue the worst of the worst, regardless of it’s Sunday … regardless of it’s Christmas,” he said Friday. “There is no ramp up, there is no draw down, we’re doing our job.”
But the administration’s own data complicates that message. Of the nearly 66,000 people held in ICE detention as of July 11 – the most recent data available – 70.6% had no criminal conviction, according to a data analysis by TRAC, a research center at Syracuse University. Many of those with convictions had committed only minor offenses, such as traffic violations, TRAC found.
The operations have drawn backlash, and some ICE tactics in New York have been rebuked in court. In May, a federal judge in Manhattan barred most ICE arrests at the city’s immigration courts after the government admitted it had cited the wrong legal basis for them, and he later found the practice arbitrary and capricious.
Belgal’s lawyers at the Legal Aid Society called the shooting “an urgent call to rein in ICE’s use of force and hold federal immigration agents accountable.”
“Our communities should not have to live in fear of federal agents who act with impunity,” the group said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ICE shooting in NYC sparks clash between Mamdani and Trump administration
