ICE Agent Shoots Dominican Man in New York Car with Five-Year-Old Son Present

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and wounded Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old national of the Dominican Republic, on Thursday afternoon, 8 October 2026, in the Marble Hill neighbourhood of New York City. Belgal was in a car with his five-year-old son when the shooting occurred. The child was not injured.

New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said a plainclothes federal officer approached the vehicle with a weapon drawn as Belgal pulled into a parking space. When the car moved forward, at least one officer fired seven rounds. Belgal was struck below the left ear. City police were not involved in the operation but responded to the shots. Belgal was taken to a hospital and later transferred into federal custody. A federal judge has temporarily barred his removal from the United States while a habeas petition is considered.

The Department of Homeland Security described the action as a targeted enforcement operation against a man with a prior grand larceny conviction and other arrests. DHS stated that Belgal has ties to the Trinitarios and that he had previously fled from officers. ICE officials said agents believed their lives were in danger and that they did not know a child was in the car. Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the shooting unconscionable and said there was no justification for firing into a vehicle containing a child. Protests formed near the hospital and in other parts of the city.

The incident is the first ICE shooting in New York City since the current administration’s immigration enforcement expansion began. It follows internal directives reported this week that instructed agents to increase daily arrests. Body-camera footage from the first NYPD officers on scene has been released. Belgal’s lawyers say a bullet remains in his body and that he was removed from the hospital minutes after treatment and taken to New Jersey.

The competing accounts centre on whether the car’s movement constituted an imminent threat and whether the officers’ plainclothes approach and the presence of the child were adequately weighed. DHS maintains the operation targeted a criminal alien. Local officials emphasise the risk to bystanders, particularly a child in the back seat. The temporary court order keeps Belgal in the country for now while those questions are examined in federal court.

The shooting has sharpened existing disagreements between city leadership and federal immigration authorities over how enforcement is conducted on New York streets. The factual core remains the discharge of seven rounds into a vehicle that contained a five-year-old, the resulting neck wound to the driver, and the immediate public reaction that followed.