ICE agent shoots man in car with a child in the Bronx, New York

In New York’s Marble Hill neighborhood, part of the Bronx, at around 4 p.m. an agent of the immigration service ICE shot a man who was sitting in a car with a child. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not say exactly what prompted the agents to open fire: the department only said that an agent used a weapon and the man was wounded.

What police and witnesses say

According to New York police commissioner Jessica Tisch, the man, whom she identified as Oscar Belgal, was just parking when two plainclothes federal agents approached the car, one of them with a drawn weapon. When Belgal moved forward, at least one of the agents fired seven rounds and hit him below the left ear. Police were not involved in the operation, but heard the shots and came to the scene. The boy was handed over to a relative.

DHS claims it wanted to detain an “illegal alien and criminal” convicted of grand theft and detained several times before. According to Tisch, Belgal was arrested for robbery in 2023, later pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence. He was then detained for selling drugs: the case is still open, and according to court documents Belgal denies guilt.

Journalists later identified the ICE agent at the scene as Brenden Cooney. Footage from the scene shows a man in a conspicuous yellow construction vest with a modified AR-15-style rifle. But this is not clear evidence that he was the one who fired at the car. Several past cases were also recalled in which Cooney was accused of excessive violence or unlawful arrests.

A witness, Pedro Almares, who worked at a restaurant nearby, told Reuters that after the shots he went outside and saw several federal agents and three or four vehicles. By his estimate, New York police arrived about ten minutes later, and the wounded man was pulled from the car only after an ambulance arrived.

Reaction from officials and protests

Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the shooting outrageous and said there was no justification for it. According to him, the agents who surrounded the car wore masks and “construction vests,” so it was hard to tell they were immigration officers. The mayor said that on Thursday evening he spent two hours trying to persuade President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to release the wounded man and stop operations against migrants in the city, but without success. Overnight, federal authorities took the man out of the hospital. New York Governor Kathy Hochul set out a similar position to Trump and Mullin by phone.

According to the Associated Press, a heated press conference took place at the scene on Thursday evening, at which several local politicians condemned the shooting. Demonstrators demanded that ICE agents be removed from the streets immediately and marched to the hospital where the wounded man was being treated. Some of them clashed with police, who detained several people.

DHS says its agents are forced to arrest dangerous foreigners in an unpredictable and dangerous environment, and blames “reckless sanctuary policies” in regions run by Democrats. Since last year, ICE agents have used firearms to stop vehicles in at least ten cases, killing at least four people and wounding several others. In late September the agency banned agents from vehicle pursuits and allowed only those with special training to stop cars.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz