Federal immigration agents shot and wounded a driver while his 5-year-old child was in the back seat Thursday during a targeted enforcement operation in the Bronx in New York City, because the agents believed their lives were in danger, federal officials said.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Sunday he is “sure” ICE body camera footage of the shooting will be released.
The shooting occurred just after 4 p.m. in the Marble Hill neighborhood when an ICE agent discharged a weapon into the man’s vehicle, New York City officials said late Thursday.
Federal officers used vehicles to block the man in, but he refused lawful orders to exit his vehicle, according to Marcos Charles, executive associate director of ICE. The man allegedly drove his vehicle into two government vehicles and then “weaponized his vehicle” and accelerated toward other officers, Charles said.
The officers fired at the man, “believing that their life and the life of their partners and the general public were in danger,” Charles said.
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Oscar Belgal, 28, from the Dominican Republic, suffered a superficial wound to the neck, officials said. Charles said ICE plans to try to remove him from the country as soon as possible.
The child was not injured and is in the care of family members, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
Two agents were also injured in the encounter and have since been treated and released from the hospital, according to a law enforcement source.
Video footage released by the NYPD on Friday shows the initial moments of the incident, revealing federal agents drawing guns when they first approached Belgal’s vehicle.
The vehicle is seen reversing in a parking spot when a plainclothes federal law enforcement officer approaches the driver’s side window with his gun drawn, the video shows. The vehicle then starts to move forward when another federal agent approaches the driver side of the vehicle and draws his weapon.
As the vehicle begins to pull away, one of the agents starts to punch the driver’s side window of the car, the video shows.
The video — which does not have audio — appears to show the vehicle potentially hitting a black car that was driving by as it pulled away.
The video then changes to another angle and appears to show the aftermath of the shots being fired offscreen, as bystanders are seen ducking. Soon thereafter, an agent wearing plainclothes is seen holding a child, presumably Belgal’s 5-year-old, who was in the back seat of the vehicle at the time of the shooting.
ICE did not make any mention of federal agents drawing their weapons when they first approached the vehicle, according to their account of the shooting.
When reached for comment on the footage, the Department of Homeland Security referred CNN back to Mullin’s remarks earlier on Friday in which he defended the ICE officers’ actions, saying the target of the arrest was one of the “worst of the worst.”
Belgal, according to Mullin, was part of an investigation into a shooting of a Customs and Border Protection officer last year and had previously fled from officers in September.
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The shooting was the first involving ICE agents in New York City since President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and comes the same week as ICE leadership told agents to increase arrests by 1,000 more people daily, according to two sources familiar with the verbal directive.
This is the latest ICE shooting in which officers fired into a vehicle after claiming the driver used the vehicle as a weapon. In many of these instances, video and witnesses have called into question DHS’ version of events, most notably in the case of Renee Good, a US citizen who was fatally shot in Minneapolis early this year.
Belgal’s attorneys filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court Friday, saying he was arrested “without a valid warrant and without any consideration of his individual circumstances.” US District Judge J. Paul Oetken ordered that he remain in the US for the time being. The attorneys incorrectly referred to his last name as Bergal in the filing but confirmed his last name is Belgal.
Belgal has been transferred to a detention center in Brooklyn and spoke to his attorneys Friday, telling them he was in pain, still had a bullet in his body and wanted to see his family, the attorneys said.
“He shared for the first time that obviously he’s afraid, he’s deeply concerned about his 5-year-old son,” attorney Harold Solis said. “The first thing he asked me is whether his son is OK.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he had spoken to Trump and Mullin to negotiate the man’s release, but “those negotiations were unsuccessful.”
“I made clear to the president, to the secretary, our request that ICE agents leave the scene entirely, as well as the demand that ICE stop its enforcement actions in New York City. These actions are making the city less safe, they are making the city terrified,” Mamdani said.
A “thorough” investigation into the shooting will be conducted by Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, guided by “the evidence and the law,” Clark said in a statement Friday. New York Attorney General Letitia James said she has “full faith” in Clark to lead the probe.
What happened in the shooting
Belgal was a subject of a Homeland Security investigation and was part of a gang “known for theft using weapons,” Charles said.
“We have belief that Oscar has either indirect or direct knowledge of the shooting, and that’s why he became a target,” Mullin said.
DHS said Belgal has ties to the Trinitarios gang and had two prior arrests on drug and weapons charges.
In 2023, he was arrested for robbery, and he ultimately pleaded guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny and received five years of probation, according to NY court records. He was also arrested last year on drug charges and has pleaded not guilty, court records show.
At least one ICE agent discharged seven rounds in the incident, striking Belgal in the neck below his left ear, Tisch said.
NYPD officers responded to the scene and encountered several men in construction-style attire, face masks and at least one carrying a gun, Tisch said. The injured man was handcuffed and seated on the ground.
Witnesses reported to police they saw a man dressed in a bright yellow construction vest holding a gun. Witnesses also told officers they heard five to six gunshots and people screaming, according to police officials.
Video purportedly from the scene shows a man matching that description holding a semi-automatic rifle and wearing an ICE badge around his neck.
The video footage released Friday appears to show an agent wearing a yellow vest and holding a long gun running up to the scene after the shooting.
Mamdani said the ICE agents who surrounded the man’s vehicle were not wearing uniforms.
“There was no reasonable way to identify them as ICE agents,” Mamdani said.
The officers were wearing body cameras and they were turned on, Mullin said Friday. They were not aware there was a child in the car, he added.
Mullin said Sunday he is “sure” the footage will be released, though he did not say when.
“I’m sure it will be,” Mullin told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked whether footage from the body cameras worn by ICE agents during the encounter will be released.
“Right now, FBI and HSI are doing the investigation. So as it develops, and we get all the information out correctly, we’ll release information at due time,” Mullin said.
The aftermath of the shooting
The NYPD was not involved in the incident, the department said in a statement. After the shooting, NYPD officers arrived at the scene to deal with crowd control and evidence at the scene.
The man’s vehicle had “ballistic damage” to the front windshield, and the back windshield was shattered, Tisch said.
NYPD body-camera footage released Friday shows officers arriving at a tense scene: A man in a construction vest held up a rifle, bystanders were yelling and a handcuffed man sat on the ground receiving treatment to his neck.
Several officers lifted up the injured man, placed him into the back of the NYPD vehicle and drove away, the video shows. The officers later took the man out of the vehicle and carried him toward an ambulance, according to the video.
In addition, in the moments after the shooting, NYPD officers learned from witnesses that a 5-year-old child had been in the car, but the child was not on scene, according to a law enforcement source. This led to a frantic hunt to locate the child and to determine whether he was safe, the source said.
Detectives went door-to-door on the street, reviewed video footage and reached out to Belgal’s relatives. They finally located the child uninjured just before 7 p.m. at a Yonkers beauty salon in the care of an aunt, the source said.
Hours after the shooting, agents with Homeland Security Investigations and police officers could be seen walking behind yellow police tape as a group of protesters started gathering at the scene.
Video appears to show a tow truck removing the man’s vehicle, which has a gunshot hole through the windshield, from the scene.
HSI responded to the scene to take over the investigation of the shooting, according to a federal source, similar to the law enforcement response to the September 20 ICE shooting in Austin, Texas, which left a man from Venezuela wounded.
“At this time, federal agents have exercised their authority to take over the investigation,” Tisch said.
NY officials slam ICE operations
Mamdani offered a full-throated criticism of ICE on Thursday night, calling the agency “rotten to its core.”
“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 neighbors than they could ever have claimed to save,” he said. “We will not normalize ICE’s viciousness. We will not accept its cruelty.”
Mullin rejected that characterization and said ICE and DHS were enforcing the country’s immigration and criminal laws.
“It’s shameful that you have a mayor that goes out there and puts criminals over law-abiding citizens,” he said.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday said she also spoke with Trump and Mullin about the incident.
“I expressed outrage on behalf of New Yorkers and urged them to halt ICE enforcement operations in New York,” Hochul wrote in a post on X. “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.”
Local leaders and city council members joined the governor’s call in demanding DHS release all available body-camera footage and for the state attorney general’s office to launch an independent investigation into the shooting during a Thursday night news conference.
“We want justice for this family, we want it for this neighborhood,” New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat said at a news conference. “And as I said before, I say today, we need to get rid of ICE.”
“Whether you’re in the Bronx or Manhattan, whether you’re documented or not, whether the color of your skin or your religion, you are a New Yorker first, … and New Yorkers stand up for New Yorkers,” Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal said.
In Clark’s statement announcing her office’s investigation, the Bronx district attorney said, “Any shooting in the Bronx is a matter of grave concern that impacts community safety.”
Her office is “working to establish facts and determine the appropriate course of action” as part of the investigation, the statement said.
New York Attorney General James said New Yorkers “deserve nothing less than a full and transparent investigation conducted without fear or favor.”
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