the treacherous Dari\u00e9n Gap<\/a> in Panama until reaching Mexico.<\/p>\n\u201cWe slept together, we ate together, we did everything together,\u201d Mr. Mart\u00ednez, 25, said in an interview.<\/p>\n
They split up before crossing the border, though they would reunite in New York.<\/p>\n
Mr. Belgal told acquaintances that he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in late 2022 without being apprehended. He soon found refuge in Washington Heights, the Upper Manhattan neighborhood bustling with immigrants from the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n
A pair of Dominican sisters whose relatives knew Mr. Belgal said they extended him a hand when he arrived in November 2022, apparently penniless.<\/p>\n
Cruz Mar\u00eda Reyes, 49, one of the sisters, said that they let him stay in a spare bedroom for free over nine months. They helped him find a gig washing cars, which he abandoned once it got colder, she said, and later selling carpets at a store in downtown Manhattan.<\/p>\n
By late 2023, Ms. Reyes, who lived in the three-bedroom apartment with Mr. Belgal, said she began charging him $250 a week for the room.<\/p>\n
A few months later, in December 2023, Ms. Reyes heard loud knocks at the door.<\/p>\n
It was two police officers looking for Mr. Belgal. They handcuffed him and took him away.<\/p>\n
Police officers arrested him because two months before, according to prosecutors, Mr. Belgal and another man had robbed two people Mr. Belgal knew: Mr. Mart\u00ednez and his wife, Yesica Torres.<\/p>\n
The couple told the officers that they had gone clubbing in the Bronx on Oct. 2, 2023, with Mr. Belgal and the other man, whom they did not know, according to court filings.<\/p>\n
While they were all sitting inside a car, Mr. Belgal\u2019s accomplice pointed a gun from the driver\u2019s seat at the couple, who were seated in the back, and demanded they hand over their jewelry, prosecutors said. Mr. Belgal, seated in the passenger\u2019s seat, took their chains and rings, and about $1,100 in cash, before kicking them out of the car, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n
Mr. Belgal faced 18 criminal charges, but his lawyer, who argued at the time that Mr. Belgal was in the car but not involved in the robbery, negotiated a deal with prosecutors. Mr. Belgal pleaded guilty to just one charge: grand larceny in the fourth degree, a nonviolent felony.<\/p>\n
He received five years of probation.<\/p>\n
Mr. Mart\u00ednez and Ms. Torres, who said they were scarred by Mr. Belgal\u2019s betrayal, said they fled to the Dominican Republic after his arrest because they felt intimidated by him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe put him in jail, and he stayed in touch with us,\u201d Ms. Torres, 35, said in a phone interview last week from the Dominican Republic, describing how Mr. Belgal had accused them of \u201csnitching\u201d on him. \u201cHe threatened us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Times was unable to interview Mr. Belgal.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Legal Aid Society, which is representing Mr. Belgal, denied that he had \u201cthreatened or intimidated witnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n
A second arrest<\/p>\n
Mr. Belgal continued to share the apartment with Ms. Reyes after his first arrest.<\/p>\n
Soon, his partner and their son, a toddler at the time, arrived from the Dominican Republic and moved in, Ms. Reyes said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Belgal later left his job selling carpets and the couple stopped paying rent at the end of 2024, said Ms. Reyes, who took them to housing court.<\/p>\n
Around that time, Mr. Belgal also appeared to have turned to drug dealing, according to Manhattan prosecutors.<\/p>\n
From January to June 2025, Mr. Belgal sold plastic bags of cocaine to an undercover officer during multiple exchanges near his building on Wadsworth Avenue, and on at least one occasion, a bag that also had fentanyl and heroin, prosecutors said in a criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
Mr. Belgal was arrested in August 2025 and charged with 10 counts of criminal sale of a controlled substance. He pleaded not guilty to all counts; the case has not been resolved.<\/p>\n
Some of Mr. Belgal\u2019s neighbors said the arrests didn\u2019t define him, adding that he was generally a kind person who helped older residents with their groceries and even took them to their doctor\u2019s appointments.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou knew he was often out of a job,\u201d said Aldenia Casanova, 53, who said that Mr. Belgal replaced the locks on her door in his free time. \u201cBut he was very well-behaved and mild-mannered.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Mr. Belgal was released from custody after his second arrest, he never returned to the apartment. His partner and their son also moved out after a judge ordered them to vacate the premises because of the lapsed rent payments, records show.<\/p>\n
Ms. Reyes said that she is owed seven months of rent, or about $7,000.<\/p>\n
She criticized ICE\u2019s conduct in the shooting, but said that Mr. Belgal\u2019s run-ins with the law had ultimately exposed him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not out for revenge,\u201d Ms. Reyes said. \u201cBut he\u2019s paying for the consequences of his actions.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Legal Aid Society said that Mr. Belgal\u2019s \u201cpast does not diminish his humanity, lessen the gravity of what happened to him or erase the profound trauma his child has experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gunfire on a city street<\/p>\n
ICE first tried to arrest Mr. Belgal last month.<\/p>\n
When officers found him in the Bronx on Sept. 18, he ran into a nearby building and got away before he could be arrested, according to internal federal records.<\/p>\n
Federal agents tried again 20 days later.<\/p>\n
They fanned out in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles on Oct. 8 in the Marble Hill neighborhood, where Mr. Belgal had moved.<\/p>\n
They spotted him at about 4 p.m. inside a gray Honda, parked in front of a fire hydrant on West 225th Street, his blinkers still on.<\/p>\n
Moments later, surveillance footage shows, two officers run up to the driver\u2019s side of his car, one with his gun pointed at Mr. Belgal, who puts his car in reverse and backs up a few feet.<\/p>\n
Then, he accelerates, steering away from the officers, as one smashes the side window of the car and the other points his gun at the windshield, the video shows.<\/p>\n
At least one officer fired multiple shots at Mr. Belgal\u2019s vehicle, according to local and federal officials.<\/p>\n
After the crash, Mr. Belgal emerged from his car, its back window shattered and its windshield pierced. His son, unharmed in the back seat, was crying. Mr. Belgal held his neck, and shouted in Spanish.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe yelled, \u2018Help me!\u2019\u201d Viely Herrera, 21, a bystander, said. \u201c\u2018Help me! I\u2019m dying!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
ICE officers forced Mr. Belgal onto the pavement and handcuffed him, according to witnesses.<\/p>\n
Minutes later, New York police officers carried Mr. Belgal into an S.U.V., and drove him to a hospital.<\/p>\n
The aftermath<\/p>\n
ICE officials argued that Mr. Belgal had refused orders to exit his vehicle and accused him of \u201cweaponizing\u201d his car.<\/p>\n
The agency said that Mr. Belgal smashed his car into two ICE vehicles and tried to run over an officer, an account that has not been corroborated by the publicly available footage.<\/p>\n
Federal officials said that they would release ICE body camera footage upon concluding their investigation. The Bronx district attorney, Darcel Clark, said her office was investigating the shooting, which she described as \u201ca matter of grave concern.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arianna Montero, the mother of Mr. Belgal\u2019s son, said in a brief interview that her son had been \u201ctraumatized,\u201d speaking little and having nightmares.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy fire so much at a single person, and a child?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Federal officials said that the officers did not know the boy was in the car.<\/p>\n
Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, said that officials believed Mr. Belgal had \u201cindirect or direct knowledge\u201d about a shooting that injured an off-duty customs officer in Manhattan in July 2025<\/a>, but Mr. Mullin did not elaborate.<\/p>\nICE officials said that Mr. Belgal had ties to a gang known as the Trinitarios, but offered no evidence. His lawyers said in filings that Mr. Belgal \u2014 whom they said most recently worked in construction \u2014 \u201cvehemently\u201d denied any gang affiliations.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security blamed New York\u2019s so-called sanctuary laws, which they said prevented the city from transferring Mr. Belgal to ICE when he had been previously arrested.<\/p>\n
\u201cMake no mistake: ICE is not going anywhere, and we will continue to target the worst of the worst in sanctuary cities who refuse to jail criminal illegal aliens,\u201d the agency said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Belgal\u2019s lawyers argued that his arrest was illegal because the officers arrested him without a valid warrant and without having started deportation proceedings against him.<\/p>\n
His lawyers said he was semiconscious when he arrived at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital the night of the shooting. Inside, doctors stopped his bleeding and, when he awoke, ICE officers handcuffed him to his bed, his lawyers said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Belgal spent about five hours in the hospital and was discharged after doctors found that he was medically stable, the federal records say.<\/p>\n
ICE officers moved him the next day to the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal prison in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
His lawyers, who are suing for his release, said that he was being held without proper medical care while awaiting surgery that doctors had told him he needed to remove the bullet, adding that \u201cthe left side of his face is numb, and he can barely hear out of his left ear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anusha Bayya, Hurubie Meko, Oishika Neogi, Wesley Parnell, Nate Schweber and Ed Shanahan contributed reporting from New York. Hogla Enecia P\u00e9rez contributed reporting from the Dominican Republic. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The young man from the Dominican Republic slipped into the United States through the southern border about four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[136787,2949,17211,94852,1694,9207,13779,138320,1452,30354,11598,9205,11595,9204,8163,3782,36857,1445,28924,136420,88560,88559,9,24,56,63,65,64,126135,104,1695,138321,1069,901,1876,1446],"class_list":["post-376176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-belgal","tag-bronx-nyc","tag-clark","tag-darcel-d","tag-demonstrations","tag-deportation","tag-dominican-republic","tag-dominican-americans","tag-donald-j","tag-federal-actions-in-us-cities","tag-homeland-security-department","tag-illegal-immigration","tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-us","tag-immigration-and-emigration","tag-immigration-detention","tag-legal-aid-society","tag-make-the-road-new-york","tag-mamdani","tag-manhattan-nyc","tag-marble-hill-manhattan","tag-markwayne","tag-mullin","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-oscar","tag-police","tag-protests-and-riots","tag-santo-domingo-dominican-republic","tag-trump","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-politics-and-government","tag-zohran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376176","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=376176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}