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ICE Agent Shoots Man in Bronx With 5-Year-Old in Car; Mamdani Demands Halt After Two-Hour Call With Trump

Abdul Mannan 1 hour ago • 10 min read

Yellow police tape cordons off a gray SUV on a Bronx residential street at dusk with NYPD patrol cars and onlookers behind the line after an ICE agent shooting in Marble Hill.

A federal immigration agent opened fire on a car in the Marble Hill neighborhood of the Bronx on Thursday afternoon, wounding a 28-year-old man in the neck while a 5-year-old boy — believed to be his son — sat in the back seat, according to New York City officials and the Department of Homeland Security.

The shooting, which occurred just after 4 p.m., marks the first time an ICE agent has discharged a weapon in New York City since President Donald Trump launched his immigration crackdown, according to CNN. It triggered an immediate and extraordinary political confrontation: hours later, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood before reporters at a late-night press conference and revealed he had just spent about two hours on the phone with the president himself, pressing for the wounded man’s release and demanding that immigration enforcement halt its operations in the city.

“All they do is terrorize this city,” Mamdani said of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Fox News. He described the agency as “rotten to its core” and said it must be abolished.

According to New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, the man wounded in the shooting was identified as 28-year-old Oscar Belgal, a Dominican national. Citing NYPD Argus camera footage of the encounter, Tisch said Belgal was backing his gray Honda CR-V into a parking spot when one plainclothes federal law enforcement officer approached the driver’s side window with his gun drawn and another approached near the driver’s side headlight. The vehicle then began to move forward and went out of the camera’s view — and the cameras did not capture the moment the weapon was discharged, she said.

“Based on evidence collected at the scene, we know that at least one ICE agent discharged 7 rounds, striking the driver in the neck below his left ear,” Tisch said at the press conference, according to CNN. Investigators recovered at least seven shell casings at the scene, and the vehicle had ballistic damage to the front windshield while the back windshield was shattered, Tisch added.

The child was not injured, Tisch confirmed. He was located safe and is in the care of family members. His injuries, including what a law enforcement source described to CNN as a graze wound to the neck, were not considered life-threatening, and police transported him to the hospital.

Responding officers found a chaotic scene, according to Tisch. When NYPD officers arrived, they encountered several men in construction-style attire and face masks, at least one of them carrying a long gun — and the injured man handcuffed and seated on the ground. The wounded man was placed in an NYPD vehicle, where officers administered aid, before he was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, where he arrived in stable condition, according to CNN and Fox News.

Mamdani said the agents who surrounded Belgal’s vehicle wore construction vests and masks that concealed their faces. “There was no reasonable way to identify them as ICE agents,” he told reporters, according to CNN.

What happened in the seconds between the vehicle moving forward and the gunfire remains unexplained. Federal authorities have not said what led up to the shooting, CNN reported. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that ICE officers were conducting a targeted enforcement operation to arrest Belgal, and that officers immediately rendered aid after he was shot. Two agents were also injured in the encounter and are being treated at a local hospital, according to a law enforcement source cited by CNN — one possibly in a car accident, though it is unclear whether the accident was part of the attempted arrest or the response, a federal official told the outlet.

DHS described Belgal as an undocumented immigrant with a criminal record. The agency said he has a prior conviction for grand larceny and prior arrests involving assault, robbery, drug possession and weapons possession, and alleged that he has ties to the Trinitarios gang. Tisch said Belgal had two prior arrests in New York City: a 2023 robbery arrest in which he pleaded guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny and received five years of probation, and a 2025 charge of criminal sale of a controlled substance that is still pending. Fox News reported that DHS blamed New York City’s sanctuary policies for Belgal’s release after his 2023 arrest.

The custody battle over Belgal escalated through the night. Mamdani said he urged Trump during their two-hour conversation to have the wounded man released — an effort he said was unsuccessful — and that the city wants ICE agents to leave New York entirely. Moments before the mayor’s roughly 11:20 p.m. press conference began, Mamdani said, ICE agents removed Belgal from the hospital in an unmarked vehicle and took him into federal custody. “Let me say this plainly, what happened today was an outrage,” the mayor said, according to the New York Post.

Governor Kathy Hochul said she had also spoken with Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin about the shooting. Writing on X, she said she “expressed outrage on behalf of New Yorkers and urged them to halt ICE enforcement operations in New York,” and asked that any body camera footage of the shooting be released to the public “so we can establish the facts and get to the truth,” according to Fox News. City leaders and council members joined the call at a Thursday night press conference, demanding that DHS release all available body camera footage and that the state attorney general’s office launch an independent investigation. “We want justice for this family, we want it for this neighborhood,” said New York Representative Adriano Espaillat, adding, “we need to get rid of ICE.”

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, where Belgal was being treated, chanting “ICE off our streets” and “No justice, no peace,” according to Fox News. Protesters and police were seen shoving one another as officers set up barricades, and some demonstrators threw water bottles at officers. Police made some arrests during the demonstration.

Homeland Security Investigations has taken over the investigation of the shooting, according to a federal source cited by CNN — a response similar to the one that followed an ICE shooting in Austin, Texas, on September 20, which left a man from Venezuela wounded. “At this time, federal agents have exercised their authority to take over the investigation,” Tisch said.

The shooting came the same week ICE leadership told agents to increase arrests by 1,000 more people daily, according to two sources familiar with the verbal directive cited by CNN — a move by the Trump administration to intensify its immigration enforcement despite what the outlet described as some Republican unease about who the agency is targeting.

Analysis: Why It Matters

The Marble Hill shooting lands at the most combustible intersection in American politics: immigration enforcement colliding with a sanctuary city — and this time with a child in the back seat. That single detail, a five-year-old believed to be the wounded man’s son sitting in the car when seven rounds were fired into it, is what transformed a local enforcement action into a national story. It is one thing to debate immigration policy in the abstract; it is another to picture federal agents firing through a windshield with a child inside. That image, however imperfectly documented by NYPD cameras that captured everything except the actual shots, will do more political work than any press release from either side.

Consider what is genuinely unusual here. A sitting mayor spending roughly two hours on the phone with the president of the United States, negotiating — unsuccessfully — for the release of a single wounded detainee, is not how American federalism normally operates. Mayors do not usually get the president on the line after a police shooting, and presidents do not usually take such calls only to refuse. The exchange signals two things at once: how much political capital Mamdani is willing to spend on direct confrontation with the Trump administration, and how little deference the administration intends to show him. The call’s failure may matter more than its occurrence. Mamdani has now publicly tested the diplomatic channel and can tell his supporters it did not work — a fact that strengthens his hand for whatever comes next, whether that is lawsuits, street protests, or open non-cooperation.

The credibility gap at the center of the story is worth watching carefully. On one side sits DHS’s account: a targeted arrest of a man with a real criminal record — a grand larceny conviction, pending drug charges, alleged gang ties — whose release years earlier the agency blames on sanctuary policies. On the other sits the mayor’s and the police commissioner’s account: plainclothes officers in construction vests and masks, unidentifiable as law enforcement, firing seven rounds at a car backing into a parking spot with a child inside, then spiriting the wounded man out of a hospital in an unmarked vehicle moments before the mayor could address reporters. Neither account alone explains why the trigger was pulled, because the one piece of evidence that would answer that question — the seconds the cameras missed — remains in the hands of the federal agents who took over the investigation from the NYPD. That is precisely why the demand for body camera footage, echoed by the governor, city leaders, and the mayor, is not a procedural footnote; it is the whole ballgame. If footage exists and is released, it either vindicates the operation or indicts it. If it does not exist, the public will be asked to take the agency’s word — a proposition Mamdani has already answered by calling the agency rotten to its core.

There is also the pattern to consider. This is the first ICE shooting in New York City since the crackdown began, but it is not the first nationwide — the September 20 Austin shooting shows the template of escalation, and the reported directive to add a thousand arrests per day shows the pressure running in the opposite direction from de-escalation. Enforcement agencies under numerical quotas tend to produce more encounters, more friction, and more incidents like Marble Hill. The Trump administration’s bet is that visible toughness delivers politically; the risk is that incidents involving children and crowded city streets deliver the opposite.

What to watch next is concrete. First, whether DHS releases any body camera footage and whether the footage, if it exists, corroborates the agency’s account or the city’s. Second, whether the state attorney general’s demand for an independent investigation gains traction, given that federal agents have asserted authority over the investigation. Third, what happens to Belgal himself — now in ICE custody with a graze wound to the neck — and whether his case becomes a prolonged legal and political cause. Fourth, whether the White House or DHS offers any explanation for what prompted the shots, something federal authorities had still not done as of Thursday night. And finally, whether ICE’s posture in New York changes at all, or whether the next targeted operation in a crowded neighborhood produces the next confrontation. Mamdani has drawn his line in public and on the record with the president. The administration has crossed it. The fallout will define the relationship between City Hall and Washington for the rest of the year.