Elected officials gathered in Marble Hill on Tuesday morning to call on Target to prevent immigration enforcement agents from using a parking lot the company partially owns before operations in the neighborhood.
City Comptroller Mark Levine said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been using the lot, which serves people visiting Target and other nearby businesses.
“ICE for months has been using this parking lot as its base of operations for this local neighborhood,” Levine said.
The calls come after ICE agents wearing construction vests and masks shot 28-year-old Oscar Belgal last week while he was in his car with his 5-year-old, according to the officials.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the officers were in danger after Belgal smashed into multiple ICE vehicles as he drove away.
“We wasn’t aware the child was in the car. I can tell you that. But do you know who was Oscar? Oscar knew he had a child in his car. Oscar chose to accelerate at a high rate of speed and ram two different vehicles as he was, as appears to be going towards officers,” Mullin said.
Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson said she has heard a different account from people in the community who witnessed the shooting.
“Firing seven shots. Families were saying, ‘Ms. Gibson, we had to run for cover. We heard gunshots, and we didn’t know what was happening in the middle of the afternoon,’” Gibson said.
The shooting has prompted protests over ICE’s tactics, and whether appropriate protocols were followed.
Elected officials are also waiting to see whether the DHS releases body camera footage from the shooting. ICE’s training has also been questioned in a separate New York case.
This spring, ICE arrested a man on Long Island, and after his lawyers sued in federal court, Judge Gary Brown, appointed by President Donald Trump to the Eastern District of New York, ordered the man released.
After hearing testimony from the three ICE agents involved, Brown wrote, “The combination of the officers’ lack of training and preparation and the extraordinary pressure to exponentially increase the number of immigration arrests results in a proverbial recipe for disaster.”
Brown asked ICE to respond within three weeks and lay out steps it would take “to ensure that future ICE enforcement actions within the Eastern District of New York shall be conducted in a lawful manner.”
NY1 learned this week from a lawyer in the case that ICE has not filed anything.
“There’s many times when there’s been legal orders that have been ignored by the Trump administration all over the place so it’s not surprising to me that ICE seems to be acting in the rogue way it always has,” state Sen. Gustavo Rivera said.
Target said in a statement that it has no cooperative agreement with any immigration enforcement agencies.
The LLC that also owns the parking lot did not respond to NY1’s requests for comment.
ICE did not respond to questions about the parking lot’s use, details about last week’s shooting or the document it was supposed to file with the Eastern District of New York.