New Yorkers Rally Against ICE After Masked Officer Shoots, Injures Man With 5-Year-Old in Car

Outraged community members gathered in New York City's Marble Hill neighborhood Thursday night to demand that federal immigration agents leave the city after a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fired at least seven shots into a vehicle on a bustling street, wounding the driver while a five-year-old boy sat in the back seat.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani expressed anger at the shooting that had left the child "traumatized and terrified," and accused the Trump administration of "terrorizing" the city.

“Tonight, millions of our neighbors are wondering whether they will be safe on our streets, in our schools, at their work sites," said Mamdani, a democratic socialist. "We know that ICE is rotten to its core. Tonight's shooting is only further confirmation of what we have long known, which is that ICE operates with impunity... that they have killed far more of our neighbors than they have ever claimed to save."

Mamdani said he had spent two hours on the phone with President Donald Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin in an attempt to negotiate the release of the man who was shot, identified as 28-year-old Oscar Belgal, but ICE instead "put the man in an unmarked vehicle and whisked him away" after he was treated at a hospital for his injuries.

The shooting took place around 4:00 pm on West 225th Street, as children were being let out of numerous schools in the neighborhood, Mamdani emphasized.

According to surveillance footage, Belgal was parked in front of a fire hydrant when a plainclothes ICE officer, dressed in a construction vest and wearing a face mask, approached the driver's side window of the car with his gun drawn.

After another plainclothes agent approached the front of Belgal's car, he began pulling away from the curb. One of the ICE officers then opened fire, hitting Belgal in the neck as the boy, whom New York City authorities believe to be the man's son, sat feet away.

An eyewitness, Viely Herrera, told The New York Times that she had heard several gunshots before seeing Belgal's SUV crash into a concrete barrier. Belgal then exited the car, holding his neck and shouting in Spanish.

Herrera added that the boy in the car was crying, and the officers would not allow a woman to remove him from the scene.

With limited exceptions, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers are prohibited from shooting into a moving vehicle to stop or apprehend the driver.

Mamdani demanded to know how DHS is "keeping anyone safe" by having "individuals in construction vests, wearing masks, with long guns? Residents have no idea if these are law enforcement agents or if they are simply attacking someone on the street. And when it comes to ICE, it begs the question, what's the difference?"

DHS did not explain why its agent had fired into a moving vehicle against department policy, or mention the child who was inside the car. Officials said in a social media post that Belgal was a "criminal illegal alien" from the Dominican Republic with a prior conviction for grand larceny and a history of arrests for other crimes.

The agency said New York City authorities had previously released Belgal after his arrests.

Darializa Avila Chevalier, who is running to represent New York's 13th Congressional District, where Marble Hill lies, joined Mamdani in demanding that ICE be abolished—a call that is supported by 50% of Americans, according to a YouGov poll taken earlier this year.

Revulsion over the agency's practices has grown as Trump's mass deportation operations have intensified. DHS officers have fatally shot at least six people during enforcement operations, including three US citizens. Two of them were protesting the anti-immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.

In the past three months, two immigrants have been killed during enforcement operations—Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine. Like Belgal, the two men were operating their vehicles when the shootings took place.

Chevalier emphasized that Trump is overseeing his violent nationwide crackdown on immigrant communities "to make us feel powerless."

"But I want us to look around and look at how many people came out for this community. That is how powerful this community is," she said. "He messed with the wrong fucking city."

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said New Yorkers had shown up to rally against ICE "because ICE is a rogue, unaccountable, violent, and racist plague on our communities. Because Trump is the fascist-in-chief. We are here to bear witness and be in solidarity with our immigrant friends and neighbors."

“Our New York communities have been built by generations of immigrant love, ingenuity, creativity, and resilience," she said. "Trump can’t take that from us. ICE cannot scare, brutalize, or shoot that out of New York. And no one—no one—has the right to terrorize our communities and traumatize our kids. We are immigrant New York!"

“We demand a full investigation. We demand humanity. We demand our rights," she added. "We demand ICE get the fuck out of New York.”