NEW YORK, Oct 9 (Reuters) – US immigration officials on Friday defended federal agents who shot and wounded a New York City man in his car with a young child believed to be his son in the back seat, an incident that the city’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, called an “outrage.”
At a press conference, US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said officers did not know the child was in the car at the time they opened fire and accused the man, a Dominican who was the target of the operation, of endangering both officers and the child by using his car as a weapon.
The shooting took place on Thursday afternoon in the residential neighborhood of Marble Hill, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers attempted to arrest a man identified by authorities as Oscar Belgal.
Belgal refused to exit his car when approached by officers and then accelerated his car, struck two ICE vehicles and “weaponized” his vehicle by driving it toward other officers, Marcos Charles, a senior ICE official, said at a press conference on Friday.
Officers opened fire, and Belgal suffered a superficial wound to his neck, Charles said. He is being held in a detention facility outside New York state.
Belgal’s five-year-old son was in the back seat at the time, according to police.
Video of the shooting, including body camera footage, has not been made public. In other violent incidents, initial accounts from ICE or the Department of Homeland Security have repeatedly been contradicted by video and other evidence, sometimes in court.
Mullin said the body camera footage would eventually be released.
Belgal is a Dominican who is in the country illegally, according to US officials. He has a criminal record, including a conviction for grand larceny, which led to a sentence of five years’ probation in April 2025, Charles said.
Speaking to reporters late on Thursday at the scene of the shooting, Mamdani said he had tried unsuccessfully to secure Belgal’s release in phone calls with President Donald Trump and Mullin.
“These actions are making the city less safe,” Mamdani said. “We want ICE out of our city, ICE out of our schools, ICE out of our hospitals, ICE out of our streets, ICE away from our kids.”
In response on Friday, Mullin attacked Mamdani and criticized New York’s “sanctuary” policies, which restrict how much city agencies and police cooperate with immigration authorities, for allowing Belgal to be out on the streets instead of turning him over to federal agents.
Belgal was arrested on drug charges in 2025, a case that is still pending, according to the city’s police commissioner.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu, Kristina Cooke and Joseph Ax; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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