An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent has shot a man in New York City as he sat in a car with a child.
Citing an “unconscionable and incredibly serious situation”, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said early reports indicated that agents surrounded the man and a five-year-old in his car on Thursday 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 he has called United States 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 broke 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.”
He demanded the agency “must be abolished”.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she spoke with Trump and US 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.”
Protesters march from the scene of the shooting to a nearby hospital after an ICE officer shot a man in New York City on October 8, 2026 [Sarah Yenesel/EPA]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, said its officers were conducting a “targeted enforcement operation” in the Bronx about 4pm to arrest a 28-year-old Dominican national with a criminal conviction identified as Oscar Belgal by city police.
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 plain clothes approached with a 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 was with a relative.
According to a statement by the New York Police Department, the man remained conscious and was receiving medical treatment at a nearby hospital.
ICE under scrutiny
The shooting took place 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 their 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 against the killings and the immigration crackdown spread to hundreds of US cities.
Trump blamed the shift in US 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 deporting one million people a year.
The agency doubled in size in the first year of the second Trump administration 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.
Protesters scuffle with police near the scene of the shooting in New York [Seth Wenig/AP Photo]