Protesters gather after ICE agents shot and wounded Oscar Belgal on Marble Hill Ave. near W. 225th St. in New York City on October, 8, 2026.
Photo: Barry Williams/New York Daily News/Getty Images
It’s been more than a week since Oscar Belgal was shot in the neck by an ICE agent in the Manhattan and Bronx adjacent–neighborhood of Marble Hill, and the details of what happened to the 28-year-old Dominican man — whose five-year-old son was in the backseat of his car when the agents opened fire — continue to filter out. So far, immigrant advocates still haven’t heard anything that justifies the shooting.
“Regardless of what led them to this individual, there is a proper process to ascertain an individual,” explained Murad Awawdeh, the president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, in an interview. “They could have gotten a judicial warrant. They didn’t. They could have sent him a notice to come in for a check-in. They didn’t. They could have done several different things instead of opening fire on Oscar and his five-year-old when schools were being let out in the Bronx.”
In a petition Belgal’s attorneys filed on Wednesday seeking his release from federal custody, they said that Belgal had picked up his son from school that afternoon and had stopped at a nearby McDonald’s before arriving home. Belgal went back outside to move his car from where it was parked near a fire hydrant when, he says, an armed, masked man suddenly approached his driver’s side window.
“The men did not identify themselves, show any documents or otherwise communicate with Oscar in any substantive way. Instead, without identifying himself, the first man struck and shattered Oscar’s window and began firing a pistol into Oscar’s car while his son cowered in the back seat,” the court filing reads. “Believing that his dad had been fatally shot, his son screamed hysterically that the masked men had killed his father.”
The filing claims Belgal was not rendered aid once he exited the vehicle and that the agents “pinned him to the ground, handcuffed him, and left him slumped and semi-conscious.” Belgal’s lawyers write that it was only after their client awoke in the hospital that the agents identified themselves as ICE.
The shooting has left Belgal with numbness in the left side of his face as well as hearing loss in his left ear, they say. Though doctors instructed Belgal to have surgery to remove the bullet from his neck within the week of October 12, he has yet to receive it and reportedly is only being offered ibuprofen for his pain. After being released from the hospital, Belgal was transferred briefly to New Jersey before being sent to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where he currently remains in a segregated unit. A federal judge has temporarily blocked Belgal’s deportation out of the country as well as his transfer outside of the district or the Eastern District of New York or the District of New Jersey.
In a statement, Legal Aid Society attorneys Perry McAninch and Elyssa Williams note that MDC is “notorious for medical neglect” and that “with a bullet still lodged in his neck and his serious medical needs unmet, every additional day in custody puts him at further risk.”
They allege that federal agents violated Belgal’s right to due process by attempting to arrest him without a warrant. Federal prosecutors have until Monday, October 19 to respond to the court and justify Belgal’s continued detention.
The filing is further challenging the official narrative of the incident being put forth by the Trump administration. The Department of Homeland Security has claimed that Belgal, a Dominican national, has gang affiliations and that he was the target of an investigation into the shooting of a Customs and Border Patrol officer in the city last year. Belgal’s legal team said in their filing that ICE has yet to file evidence of those ties and that their client “vehemently denies” any involvement with gangs. According to the NYPD, Belgal has two prior arrests including one in 2013 where he pled guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny and received five years’ probation and a pending case for the criminal sale of a controlled substance for which he was arrested in 2025.
During a press conference held Friday, ICE Executive Associate Director Marcos Charles said that the agents on scene used their vehicles to box Belgal in in order to make the arrest and claimed that Belgal refused orders to exit his car and then “weaponized” his vehicle by accelerating it in the direction of other officers. When the officers opened fire, Charles said, they were “using their training and believing that their life and the lives of their partners and the general public were in danger.”
Charles said Belgal was hit “superficially” in the neck and claimed ICE officers rendered aid and transported Belgal to a nearby hospital, a fact contradicted by the release of NYPD body-camera footage that showed officers arriving on the scene following the shooting and eventually transporting Belgal in their department vehicle. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin later insisted that the ICE agents didn’t know there was a child in the car.
There’s still no available video footage of the shooting itself. Surveillance footage released by the NYPD appears to show Belgal’s car accelerating forward away from officers after his window was smashed, but the moment of the shooting was not captured on camera. On Sunday, Mullin indicated that there is ICE bodycam footage from the incident that would likely be released, but suggested the timing hinged on the ongoing investigation. The Bronx district attorney Darcel Clark said her office is also investigating the shooting, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani has said that she has his full confidence.
The New York Immigration Coalition’s Awawdeh doesn’t buy DHS’s explanations. “They chose violence and they chose these theatrics because this is what ICE does now. It’s sow as much harm as they can in this moment and continue to push people further into the shadows, create more panic, more fear, and more chaos in our communities,” he said. “And it’s never been about safety and security; it’s always been about cruelty because that’s their point here.”
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