An ICE agent shoots a Dominican man in the neck in Marble Hill; his five-year-old son was in the car

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and wounded a 28-year-old Dominican man during an arrest operation in Marble Hill on Thursday afternoon. The man, identified by New York police as Oscar Belgal, was struck in the neck below the left ear. His five-year-old son was in the back seat of the car and was not physically hurt. Belgal was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital in Inwood and remains in stable condition, though his lawyer said a bullet is still in his body.

The Department of Homeland Security described the operation as targeted and called Belgal a criminal illegal alien. It said he had a prior conviction for grand larceny and prior arrests for assault, robbery, drug possession and weapons possession, and that he was associated with the Trinitarios, a group the Justice Department has described as a transnational criminal organisation. DHS said he had been arrested in December 2023 and released, and blamed policies in Democrat-led cities. An ICE official said agents believed their lives were at risk and did not know a child was in the car.

New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said a plainclothes federal officer approached Belgal's car with a weapon drawn as he pulled into a parking space near West 225th Street. When the car moved forward, at least one officer fired seven rounds, according to NBC New York. Tisch said body-worn cameras from the first NYPD officers on the scene did not capture the shooting itself, but that evidence at the scene showed at least one ICE agent had discharged seven rounds. Pedro Almaraz, who works at a nearby restaurant, said he heard three or four gunshots and saw a man on the ground surrounded by officers in face masks and Department of Homeland Security vests.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the situation unconscionable and incredibly serious. He said early reports indicated that agents had surrounded Belgal and the child before firing multiple rounds, and that he believed the child was unharmed. Mamdani said he would ask President Trump to end ICE enforcement actions in the city. Governor Kathy Hochul said New Yorkers were outraged and demanded immediate answers from federal authorities. Protests formed outside the hospital on Thursday evening and continued on Friday.

Accounts of what happened in the seconds before the shots differ. ICE associate director Marcos Charles said agents used vehicles to block Belgal, that he refused orders to leave the car, that he struck two government vehicles, and that he then used his own vehicle as a weapon by accelerating toward other agents. City officials have not confirmed that sequence. A federal judge has ordered that Belgal be kept in the United States while his lawyers argue an emergency petition for his release. His lawyer, identified in reports as Solis, said Belgal was removed from the hospital within minutes of being treated and taken to New Jersey.

This is the first shooting by ICE agents in New York City during the current enforcement drive. The incident occurred around 4 p.m. on 8 October in a neighbourhood that sits at the northern tip of Manhattan, adjacent to the Bronx. The child is now with relatives. Belgal's immigration status and the full criminal record cited by DHS have not been independently verified in public court documents released so far.

The political effect is already visible. A mayor who has opposed federal immigration enforcement inside the city now has a concrete case in which an agent fired into a car that also held a child. Federal officials have a concrete case in which they say a man with a prior conviction tried to use a vehicle against them. The hearing set by the federal judge will decide whether Belgal stays in the country while those two accounts are tested. Until then he is in custody, wounded, and the subject of protests outside the hospital where he was first treated.