An ICE officer shot a 28-year-old Dominican man in the neck on Thursday afternoon as he pulled into a parking space in Marble Hill, Manhattan, with a 5-year-old boy in the car. The man, identified by the NYPD as Oscar Belgal, survived and was treated at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital. The child was not hurt. Late Thursday night federal agents removed Belgal from the hospital and took him into custody, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said; his whereabouts have not been made public.
The Department of Homeland Security says its officers were conducting a targeted operation to arrest Belgal, whom it called a criminal illegal alien with a grand larceny conviction, and that during the incident an officer discharged his weapon. It has not said what prompted the shooting. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, whose officers were not part of the operation but heard the gunfire and responded, gave a more detailed account at a news conference that night, reported by the Associated Press: a plainclothes federal officer approached the car with his gun drawn, a second plainclothes officer followed, Belgal began to pull the car forward, and at least one officer fired seven rounds, one of which struck Belgal below his left ear.
What Is Known and What Is Not
The shooting happened around 4 p.m. on a street in Marble Hill, the small piece of Manhattan that sits on the Bronx side of the Harlem River. Tisch said an NYPD security camera captured the moments leading up to the gunfire but not the shooting itself. Bystander video posted afterward shows a man seated on the ground with his hands behind his back and, separately, NYPD officers carrying Belgal to a police vehicle. The car was left blocking the road with a bullet hole in the windshield and an exit hole in a rear window.
The officers were not in uniform. Mamdani said they wore construction vests and masks. A restaurant employee told the AP he heard several shots, saw a man on the ground surrounded by officers in face masks and vests with DHS lettering, and heard witnesses screaming.
Belgal was arrested on a robbery charge in 2023, pleaded guilty to grand larceny and received probation, Tisch said. He was later arrested on a drug sale charge that is still pending; court records show he pleaded not guilty.
What has not been said: why the officer fired, whether Belgal’s car struck or threatened anyone, whether the officers identified themselves before drawing weapons, and whether any federal body is reviewing the shooting. The FBI, which was at the scene Thursday evening, has not described its role.
The Reaction
Mamdani called the shooting an outrage and said there was no justification for what the city had seen. He said he spent two hours Thursday night on the phone with President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin asking them to release Belgal and to halt enforcement operations in the city, without success. Governor Kathy Hochul said she delivered the same message to both men.
City Council Member Carmen De La Rosa, who represents Marble Hill and emigrated from the Dominican Republic, said at a press conference at the scene that residents were heartbroken and enraged. Demonstrators who gathered there chanted for ICE to leave the city and then marched to the hospital, where a crowd blocked the intersection at the entrance. When police put up barricades to keep the ambulance lane open, some protesters shoved the barriers and threw water bottles; police made arrests.
DHS’s statement blamed the confrontation on the city. It said its officers are forced to make arrests at large in the community in unpredictable and dangerous environments because sanctuary policies release dangerous illegal aliens rather than transferring them from jail. There is no legal definition of a sanctuary jurisdiction; the term generally describes governments that decline to hold people on ICE detainers or share certain information.
The Pattern
The Marble Hill shooting is the latest in a series. ICE officers have fired their weapons during more than a dozen vehicle stops since 2025, killing at least four people, according to the AP. The common feature is a car: an officer approaches, the driver moves, the officer fires, and the agency says afterward that the vehicle was used as a weapon. In at least one case, a fatal Chicago shooting last year, a New York Times video analysis contradicted that account. Two days after Marble Hill, an ICE agent in Houston struck a fleeing man with his vehicle during a chase.
In late September, ICE issued guidance prohibiting high-speed car chases and restricting vehicle stops to officers who have completed specific training. The Marble Hill shooting involved neither a chase nor a moving stop; the car was parking. Whether the officers had the training, and what the guidance says about approaching a stationary car with a weapon drawn, are questions the agency has not answered.
For New York’s immigrants, the practical facts are these. The officers’ construction vests and masks, residents said, made them indistinguishable from anyone else approaching a car with a gun. The city’s leverage was a phone call to the White House; the NYPD arrived after the shots and has no authority over federal operations. Anyone with a pending case, an old arrest or a removal order in New York should assume ICE knows where they live and park, and should talk to a lawyer now about how to respond if officers approach a vehicle.