By Jonathan Allen and Joseph Ax
NEW YORK, Oct 9 (Reuters) - US immigration officials defended federal agents on Friday 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 and rebuked Mayor Zohran Mamdani for his condemnation of immigration agents.
US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said at a press conference that 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.
The man, identified by officials as Oscar Belgal, refused to exit his car when approached by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on Thursday afternoon in Marble Hill, Manhattan's northernmost neighborhood.
Before Belgal, federal immigration officers had shot at least 21 people, killing 7 of them, across the US since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025 promising record-breaking deportations, an unusually high number for civil law enforcement operations.
Marcos Charles, a senior ICE official, said at the press conference that Belgal accelerated his car and struck two ICE vehicles and appeared to be "going towards officers" when they began shooting.
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, and Reuters was unable to verify Charles' account.
Belgal suffered a superficial wound to his neck, Charles said. He is being held in a detention facility outside New York state. Belgal's 5-year-old son was in the back seat at the time, according to police.
Belgal can be seen sitting by a car with his hands cuffed behind him and patches of what appear to be fresh blood on the tarmac in a three-minute body-worn camera video released by the New York Police Department on Friday, with several agents dressed in plain clothes standing around him. One is holding a rifle and wearing a fluorescent reflective vest.
A crowd of angry onlookers gathered outside a corner store shouts at the agents from the sidewalk. Several city police officers pick up Belgal by his arms and legs, put him in their car and take him to a hospital.
"Yo, put pressure, put pressure!" one of the police officers instructs his colleagues with Belgal in the back of the police car.
Mullin said body-worn camera video from ICE agents would also be released.
Belgal is a Dominican who is in the country illegally and had previously evaded an effort by ICE agents to apprehend him in September, according to US officials. He pleaded guilty last year to fourth-degree grand larceny for stealing something from another person, leading to a sentence of five years on probation, and is due in court in December on charges of criminal sale of a controlled substance, to which he pleaded not guilty, according to New York court records.
Speaking to reporters late on Thursday at the scene of the shooting, Mamdani, noting he himself was an immigrant, condemned ICE as "rotten to the core" and said he had tried unsuccessfully to secure Belgal's release in phone calls with Trump and Mullin.
Mamdani said the shooting is "further devastating confirmation of what we have long known, which is that ICE operates with impunity, that they sow chaos and terror across our country, that they have killed far more of our neighbors than they could ever have claimed to save."
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 unless a person has been convicted of violent or otherwise serious felonies.
Trump says aggressive efforts to deport immigrants are necessary to protect the safety of native-born Americans.
Public defenders at agencies that have represented Belgal in court also condemned the shooting.
Legal Aid said in a statement the shooting amounted to "an urgent call to rein in ICE's use of force and hold federal immigration agents accountable," calling on city prosecutors to investigate the agents involved.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu, Kristina Cooke and Joseph Ax; Editing by Donna Bryson and Daniel Wallis)
