WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Homeland Security officials said Friday that immigration officers feared for their lives when they shot a man driving with his young son in New York, wounding him and sparking protests in the city.
Local police released surveillance camera and body camera footage of the chaotic moments before and after the gunfire, but those videos didn't immediately answer questions about whether the officers were justified in opening fire.
The 28-year-old Dominican national wounded in the ICE operation was being held at a federal jail in Brooklyn with a bullet still in his body, according to his lawyers, and was in pain, afraid for himself and deeply concerned for his unhurt but terrified 5-year-old son.
“You’re not supposed to get shot in your car with your child sitting in the back. Period,” his lawyer, Harold Solis, said following a court hearing.
The federal officers who opened fire weren't aware that the child was in the car, senior immigration officials said Friday.
New York City police security cameras recorded the start of the encounter, but not the shooting itself.
One video released by the department shows two immigration officers wearing civilian garb running up to a parked vehicle with their guns drawn and pointed at the driver. As one officer bashes the barrel of his gun against the car’s windows, the driver peels away from those officers on the narrow street and out of view of the camera.
A second video taken from a different angle shows the scene a moment later as people scramble and dive for cover on the sidewalk. Only seconds elapsed between when agents first ran up to the car and when it came to rest against a concrete barrier a few yards down the street, with bullet holes in its windshield and a rear-seat window.
Marcos Charles, the head of enforcement and removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the driver had refused orders to exit his vehicle, and then accelerated and smashed into two government vehicles as ICE officers tried to block him from driving away.
“Our officers, using their training and believing that their life and the life of the partners and the general public were in danger, used their training and fired weapons,” he said during a news conference in Washington.
He said the driver was injured “superficially” in the neck.
New York City police and local court records identified the wounded man as Oscar Belgal. His lawyers later gave the spelling of his last name as Bergal. Federal officials spelled his last name Bengal.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin blamed the man for putting his son at risk by trying to evade officers.
The shooting was the latest violent encounter with ICE officers during President Donald Trump’s nationwide immigration crackdown. The agency has on previous occasions said its officers felt in danger when operating against immigration targets or during protests. In some instances, evidence has later emerged casting doubt on those claims.
Belgal associated with a robbery crew that used mopeds and weapons, and was convicted of grand larceny last year and sentenced to five years of probation, Charles said, adding that he evaded officers in September when ICE tried to arrest him for deportation.
Belgal has pleaded not guilty to narcotics-sale charges in an ongoing case. The Legal Aid Society, which represents him in that case, called Friday for a “full and transparent” investigation of the shooting, but declined further comment.
Attorneys representing Belgal filed an emergency petition challenging the legality of his detention, and a judge issued an order temporarily barring the government from removing him from the U.S.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, both Democrats, said late Thursday that they had unsuccessfully pressed Mullin and Trump to release Belgal. They also urged the administration to immediately release ICE officers' body camera footage of the shooting and to halt immigration enforcement operations in the city.
Mullin said ICE would release ICE body camera footage from the shooting, but declined to say when. Under agency policy, bodycam video can be released within 72 hours if “determined that it is in the best interests of the agency.”
NYPD body camera footage released Friday shows the scene after the arrival of local police, who had not been involved in the immigration operation. Belgal is seen sitting on the pavement with his hands behind his back as federal officers attend to his injury. The police officers then lift Belgal, place him into their SUV and drive him to a nearby hospital.
“Yo put pressure. Put pressure,” an officer can be heard saying as the SUV reverses down the block.
New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Thursday that the federal immigration officers fired seven rounds during the incident.
Mamdani called the shooting an “outrage."
“There is no justification for what we have seen today,” he said late Thursday.
Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said Friday that her office is investigating the shooting and working to determine "the appropriate course of action.”
Mullin accused New York officials of creating an unsafe atmosphere for immigration detentions.
Under laws in place for years, the city's jails don't honor most immigration detention requests, meaning people awaiting trial for minor crimes, or who have finished serving jail sentences, are regularly freed even if they are being sought for deportation.
“Why would they release these individuals back onto the streets?” Mullin said.
Homeland Security officials have cited the “weaponization” of vehicles in calling other shootings justified, though video footage has sometimes called those claims into question.
ICE agents have fired their guns during more than a dozen vehicle stops since last year, killing at least four people and wounding others.
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Marcelo and Peltz reported from New York. Associated Press reporters Anthony Izaguirre in New York City and Ryan Foley in Iowa City, Iowa, contributed.
