{"id":370656,"date":"2026-10-12T00:08:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T00:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/370656\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T00:08:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T00:08:14","slug":"ice-agents-looked-more-like-mass-shooters-than-law-enforcement-in-nyc-shooting-mamdani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/370656\/","title":{"rendered":"ICE agents looked more like ‘mass shooters’ than law enforcement in NYC shooting: Mamdani"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Mamdani on Sunday compared videos of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shooting a man in a car with his 5-year-old boy in the backseat last week <\/a>to recordings of mass shooter killings in a scathing rebuke of the controversial federal officers he wants out of New York City.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels as if you\u2019re almost looking at a mass shooter as opposed to seeing someone who\u2019s purportedly representing a federal agency,\u201d Mamdani said in an interview on MS Now.<\/a> \u201cWhat you could see in that video and in the videos that have been released since is people, bystanders, outside, unsure as to what they were even seeing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a reason why law enforcement agents are supposed to wear identifiable information and uniforms,\u201d Mamdani told MS Now\u2019s Jacob Soboroff.<\/p>\n

An ICE agent fired seven bullets into a silver Honda Civic driven by Oscar Belgal, 28, on Marble Hill Ave. near W. 225th St.<\/a> Thursday afternoon, hitting him in the neck. His 5-year-old son was in the back seat when the bullets flew into Belgal\u2019s car.<\/p>\n

\"Mayor<\/p>\n

MS Now<\/p>\n

Mayor Mamdani spoke to MS Now’s Jacob Soboroff on Sunday morning about the ICE shooting of Oscar Belgal. (MS Now)<\/p>\n

While video of the actual shooting has not been released, agents were in plainclothes, some disguised as construction workers, when they ran up to Belgal\u2019s car, their weapons raised at the undocumented immigrant.<\/p>\n

Mamdani said he spoke to President Trump<\/a> and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin in two hours of phone calls, and said Mullin had no issue with the way the ICE agents acted.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI implored both of them (to look) at the footage,\u201d Mamdani said. \u201cYou\u2019re talking about agents who are opening fire in broad daylight. Again, we\u2019re talking about around 4 p.m. on a Thursday. We\u2019re talking about people carrying their shop bags, walking by a bodega, thinking they\u2019re on their way home. Then they hear shots ring out, and they don\u2019t even know whether this is from someone who is supposed to be a law enforcement agent or just someone who is terrorizing the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it comes to ICE, there is no difference between those two things,\u201d he added sternly.<\/p>\n

Belgal, who is also identified as Oscar Bergal in some court filings, still had a bullet in his neck as he sat in a cell in the MDC Brooklyn federal jail, which has been used to house ICE detainees since last year.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for Belgal said Sunday that their client is being held under \u201cdeplorable\u201d conditions and hasn\u2019t been given any food since Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile he is currently in solitary confinement, a bullet remains lodged in his neck, the left side of his face is numb, and he can barely hear out of his left ear. Doctors have told him he urgently needs surgery, but that the procedure was too dangerous to perform Thursday evening without a specialized surgeon present,\u201d his attorneys from the Legal Aid Society and Make the Road New York said. \u201cRather than receiving the urgent medical attention, care, and compassion he desperately needs, Mr. Belgal reports being confined to a solitary cell, where he is forced to relive the terrifying moments of being shot. He says he has not eaten a single meal since Thursday and has been told that the only water available to him comes from a bathroom sink.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. Judge Paul Oetken prohibited the feds from removing Belgal from the country absent a ruling from him and said he must remain in New York City or New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Surveillance footage shows Belgal in his car by a fire hydrant while two plainclothes ICE agents approach with weapons drawn. One of them starts punching at his window as he pulls away. A second video shows the shooting, which is off camera, and agents swarming the area as stunned residents try to run away with their hands raised.<\/p>\n

The young boy was left traumatized from the experience, his mother told officials.<\/p>\n

\"CCTV<\/p>\n

NYPD<\/p>\n

CCTV video shows ICE agents surrounding the car of Oscar Belgal on Marble Hill Ave. in Manhattan on Oct. 8. (NYPD)<\/p>\n

When asked if he thought the agents broke the law, Mamdani said ICE \u201cview the law as a suggestion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a reason why the NYPD would not be shooting at a moving vehicle,\u201d the mayor said.<\/p>\n

Also Sunday, Secretary Mullin doubled down on calling Belgal a \u201cdangerous\u201d career criminal with a lengthy rap sheet who evaded ICE last month.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we approached his vehicle, we were giving lawful commands. We had approached him just like any other undercover agency that\u2019s out there, from local, state, federal, or county that has undercover officers. We had our badges out,\u201d Mullin said on CBS\u2019 Face the Nation.<\/a> Belgal, he added, \u201cdecided to accelerate and- and ram into another vehicle with his five-year-old in the vehicle, and then tried to accelerate towards other police officers.\u201d<\/p>\n

DHS officials have said Belgal \u201cweaponized\u201d his vehicle, echoing similar, oft-challenged claims<\/a> in past ICE shootings \u2014 including the killing of Renee Good, 37, in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.<\/a> In Good\u2019s case, DHS officials said she used her vehicle as a weapon, a claim directly contradicted by video evidence.<\/p>\n

When host Margaret Brennan asked Mullin if he\u2019d release footage from the agents\u2019 body cameras, he said that DHS would \u201crelease all the information\u201d after an investigation by Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI.<\/p>\n

Belgal had been arrested twice over the last three years for robbery and selling drugs and was free on supervised release<\/a> after being charged with selling fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine to an undercover narcotics detective last year, according to court documents.<\/p>\n

\"Demonstrators<\/p>\n

Barry Williams \/ New York Daily News<\/p>\n

Demonstrators gather at Foley Square in Manhattan on Friday to protest the ICE shooting of Oscar Belgal. (Barry Williams \/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

DHS said Belgal is an associate of the Trinitarios street gang who may have \u201cdirect or indirect knowledge\u201d of the shooting of a federal Customs and Border Protection officer in Fort Washington Park in Manhattan last year.<\/p>\n

In his Sunday interview, Mamdani said ICE asked the NYPD to take Belgal into custody after rushing him to New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they said they wanted us to take Mr. Belgal into custody, I asked, \u2018On what warrant?\u2019 We do not have a warrant for (him) in New York City. And when I asked that question, (Mullin) started to go into the same language that he used in the press conference, language that we know they have used to describe so many across this country,\u201d Mamdani said on MS Now.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey continue to use the language (that their detainees are) the worst of the worst, and when you look at who ICE has detained, more than 70 percent of them do not have a criminal record,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Mamdani on Sunday compared videos of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shooting a man in a car…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[128,262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,12,56,63,261,65,64,265],"class_list":["post-370656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-bronx","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-sub-county-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}