ICE Agents Shoot Man with Child in Car; Officials Defend Actions
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents fired shots at a vehicle in the Marble Hill neighborhood of Manhattan Thursday night. The car was carrying a five-year-old boy in the back seat, but the officers were unaware of the child when they opened fire.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin defended the agents’ actions as necessary to stop a suspect who had a history of violent crime. Mullin said the suspect, 28-year-old Oscar Belgal, had accelerated toward the ICE officers after resisting arrest and placed his car in the path of law-enforcement vehicles.
Belgal is now being held in a New York detention facility. He has prior convictions for grand larceny, assault, robbery and weapons possession, and authorities say he may be linked to the Trinidadian gang known as the Trinitarios.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the incident “unconscionable” and criticized ICE agents for using opaque identification badges. The mayor confirmed that the child was unharmed and noted that the officers were wearing construction-style vests that obscured their faces.
Mullin added that the officers had identified themselves and were wearing body-worn cameras that were turned on during the exchange, but no video has yet been released to the public. Unverified footage on social media suggests that the officers could have been accurately identified as ICE agents.
The shooting follows a spike in ICE-related shootings nationwide, including the fatal January attack by an ICE officer on Minneapolis resident Renee Good. State officials, including Governor Kathy Hochul, are demanding answers and calling for an investigation into the circumstances.
The Department of Homeland Security has pledged to investigate how many officers fired weapons and to review the incident in light of Washington’s continued enforcement agenda in New York.
