An ICE agent shot a 28-year-old Dominican immigrant in an Upper Manhattan neighborhood on Thursday, setting off a fury of anger about the Trump administration’s enforcement operations across the city — and questions about how the chaotic scene unfolded.
Police said a federal immigration officer shot and wounded 28-year-old Oscar Belgal in the Marble Hill section of the Bronx, while his 5-year-old son was in the backseat. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Belgal’s shooting was justified and happened when agents were trying to bring him into custody.
The frenetic incident, which happened along a busy commercial corridor as New Yorkers were coming home from work or picking up their children, prompted protests as well as swift condemnations from elected leaders. It also exposed the limits of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s tenuous relationship with Trump; the mayor said he was unsuccessful in arguing for Belgal’s release after an hourslong call.
Lawyers for Belgal, who is being held at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, are seeking his release and to block his deportation. They said he’s in pain and has a bullet still lodged in his body.
Here’s what else we know:
What happened?
ICE officers attempted to arrest Belgal near West 225th Street and Marble Hill Avenue while he was in the car with his child at around 4 p.m. Thursday, city officials said.
At least one ICE officer fired into the vehicle, injuring Belgal in the neck below his left ear, and police recovered seven shell casings, police said. The front windshield of Belgal’s car was damaged and the rear window was shattered, according to police.
Bystander videos and NYPD bodycam footage show an ICE agent wearing a bright yellow construction vest, holding a long gun across his chest while Belgal is handcuffed on the ground next to a dented gray SUV. Other men wearing bulletproof vests, plain clothes and holstered guns are also surrounding the vehicle.
Belgal’s son was not injured and is safe with his family members, officials said.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said police were not involved with the immigration operation and officers only arrived after reports of gunfire. Bodycam footage released Friday shows two officers carrying Belgal into their vehicle and rushing him to a nearby hospital.
One officer can be heard telling the officer to apply pressure to the gunshot wound, the video shows.
Neighbors in the predominantly Latino and working-class neighborhood said they were rattled by the shooting, which happened right next to a busy subway stop along the 1 line.
Residents and local elected leaders had reported ICE sightings almost daily and raised concerns about a commercial parking in the area used as a staging ground for operations.
“Law enforcement is supposed to keep New Yorkers, Americans safe,” City Councilmember Pierina Sanchez, who represents the area, said on WNYC on Thursday. “Shooting wildly into a residential neighborhood, a child in the backseat there is no excuse on earth that could ever mean that ICE should have been doing that.”
Who is Belgal?
Belgal was treated at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital and released later that night to an unknown location and later transferred to a Brooklyn federal detention center.
Paige Austin, an attorney with Make the Road New York who is representing Belgal, said Friday in court she spoke briefly on the phone with him. He told her he is in pain and still has a bullet in his body.
In court documents filed late Thursday in the Southern District of New York, Belgal’s lawyers raised concerns about his swift transfer and medical care. They said his family had not been allowed to visit. Lawyers said Belgal has another 1-year-old child.
Belgal’s attorneys said immigration agents lacked a valid warrant for his arrest, and no notice to appear in immigration court had been authorized or issued prior. They asked the court to order that Belgal immediately be released from custody and not removed from the United States. They also asked the judge to issue an order that he remain in New York City or New Jersey.
Police said Belgal had two prior arrests in New York City, including a 2023 robbery arrest that resulted in a guilty plea to fourth-degree grand larceny and a sentence of five years’ probation.
A 2025 arrest on a drug-sale charge remains pending, Tisch said.
What are New York’s elected leaders saying?
Mamdani said he spent two hours on the phone with Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, but was not able to negotiate Belgal’s release from custody.
“New York City will not stand by while ICE agents shoot New Yorkers, and we will not back down from the demand that so many, including myself, have put forward time and again. This is an agency that must be abolished,” Mamdani said Thursday night.
City Hall spokesperson Sam Raskin said Friday the city and police were investigating everything that happened during the incident, the protests that followed and ICE’s staging area in the parking lot. He said “heinous shooting underscores the dangers that ICE operations create in our communities.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul said she asked Trump and Mullin to stop ICE operations in New York and release any body camera footage from federal officers.
“We expect federal authorities to provide a full and transparent accounting of the circumstances surrounding this incident,” Hochul said. “New Yorkers deserve to know exactly what happened and why.”
Bruce Blakeman, Hochul’s Republican opponent in the November election, defended ICE Friday at a rally with Trump in Syracuse. He called Belgal an illegal migrant and a convicted felon, and blamed Hochul’s sanctuary policies for allowing Belgal into the state.
“Kathy Hochul, we’re outraged that you would let this guy in our state and defend him,” Blakeman told a crowd at the rally.
Hochul’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the criticism.
What is ICE saying?
The federal government said it is investigating the incident. Officials said ICE agents used their vehicles to block Belgal’s car but Belgal refused orders to exit and then accelerated, smashing into two ICE vehicles before proceeding to accelerate toward other officers.
Surveillance video released by the NYPD shows two law enforcement officials, one with his gun drawn, approaching a gray SUV that appears to be idling or parked by the curb. The car then pulls away from the officers as one appears to punch the driver’s side window.
Another video shows bystanders running for cover but the SUV is out of the shot.
Mullin said during a press conference Friday that officers did not know there was a child in the car.
He said any agents who fired shots were put on administrative leave as is typical when a weapon is discharged. He did not specify how many agents would be placed on leave.
Mullin said Belgal was not in the country legally and called him a “thug,” the “absolute worst of the worst” and a “true threat to society” who had “direct or indirect” knowledge of a recent shooting of a federal Customs and Border Protection officer. He said that’s why Belgal was initially transferred out of New York to a highly secured facility, but did not specify where.
How have New Yorkers reacted?
Spontaneous protests erupted late Thursday night and led to the arrest of five people near West 120th Street and Broadway.
Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Mamdani-backed Democratic nominee for the congressional seat that includes Marble Hill, criticized police officers for escalating violence during subsequent protests, including shoving her to the ground.
She called on Tisch to step down.
New Yorkers who were outraged by the incident also took part in a peaceful demonstration in lower Manhattan on Friday.
Dozens of people in the crowd at Foley Square held up signs and chanted as immigration activists took to the stage to publicly denounce the Thursday shooting.
“We want ICE off our streets. We want justice, we want peace,” the demonstrators chanted as they walked down Sixth Avenue.
Samantha Max and Arya Sundaram contributed to this article.