MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough slammed Immigration and Customs Enforcement after an agent shot and wounded a man inside an SUV in New York City on Thursday while a 5-year-old sat in the back seat. The “Morning Joe” co-host accused federal agents of “gambling with the lives” of children and warned that President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown will be “looked back upon as a dark, dark chapter in American history.”
According to New York City officials, at approximately 4 p.m. ET in Manhattan’s Marble Hill neighborhood, 28-year-old Oscar Belgal was shot in the neck after plainclothes federal agents approached his vehicle. The child, believed to be Belgal’s son, was not injured.
In a post on X, the Department of Homeland Security said its officers were attempting to an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic and alleged that he had a criminal conviction for grand larceny and multiple previous arrests.
On Friday morning, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said agents were unaware a child was in the vehicle. He also blamed Belgal, who he said attempted to flee and struck officers’ vehicles.
Scarborough told viewers, “Just put yourself in the scene here. … As school is let out in New York, that’s the time an ICE agent unleashed a hail of gunfire into a car” with a 5-year-old in the back seat.
“The boy, only by the grace of God, was not hurt,” he added.
Scarborough argued that the shooting raises serious questions about ICE’s extreme tactics and whether agents are following established policing principles on the use of deadly force.
DHS doesn’t “talk about how every other law enforcement agency in America would have gone in and gotten that man peacefully out of the car,” he said. “They don’t want to talk about that. No, no, they don’t want to talk about why an amped-up federal agent sprayed bullets in the direction of a car on a crowded street in a residential area at school pickup time.”
For Scarborough, the central issue isn’t the man’s criminal history or the broader debate over immigration enforcement, but the danger posed by the agents’ actions and the potential consequences for those caught in the middle.
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Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”