The illegal immigrant shot by ICE in the Bronx carried a record of armed robbery and drug dealing, and neighbors reject the mayor’s claim that he is a New Yorker.
Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old Dominican Republic native, was shot in the neck by an ICE agent during an attempted arrest in Marble Hill after he tried to drive off in his Honda SUV with his 5-year-old son in the back seat.
The New York Post reported that security footage showed plainclothes agents rushing his parked car with guns drawn Thursday around 4 p.m., and that Belgal peeled away, accelerating into two agents before seven bullets smashed through the vehicle’s windows. His son was unharmed. Belgal survived, was treated at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, and was later moved into federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
Federal officials say Belgal is an illegal immigrant who entered the country around 2022, built a serious criminal record in New York, and remained free in part because local authorities declined to honor an immigration detainer. Mayor Zohran Mamdani called him “a New Yorker.” Neighbors and the mother of a child killed in gang crossfire said that label is false.
Marcos Charles, head of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, said Belgal refused to comply and drove at the officers.
Charles stated that Belgal “accelerated” at the agents, “smashing” into two of them.
"Our officers, using their training and believing that their life and the life of the partners and the general public were in danger, used their training and fired weapons."
Fox News reported that account as authorities released NYPD bodycam footage of officers responding after the shooting and surveillance video of the moments around it. NYPD was not involved in the shooting itself. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin confirmed agents wore body-worn cameras, though footage was not immediately released in full.
This was ICE’s second try. Officials said Belgal fled a prior arrest attempt in September. Agents were investigating alleged links between Belgal and a July 2025 shooting of an off-duty Customs and Border Protection officer at Fort Washington Park. Mullin said Belgal was believed to have “direct or indirect knowledge” of that crime. One suspect in the CBP shooting, also described as an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on the following Monday.
Court records and sources detailed a rapid path from illegal entry to repeated brushes with the law.
About a year after he is believed to have entered the United States illegally around 2022, Belgal was tied to an armed robbery in Fordham Heights. According to the criminal complaint described in reporting, he was driving with two people in the back seat along Morris Avenue when he turned, pointed a gun, and demanded, “give me your jewelry or I will shoot you.” The victims handed over jewelry and about $500 in cash.
He was arrested in December 2023. He was released without bail pending trial. In April 2025 he pleaded guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny. He drew a sentence of a month in jail and five years of probation.
In August 2025 he was arrested again, this time for allegedly selling fentanyl, cocaine, and heroin. The case was not bail-eligible. Prosecutors sought and received the highest level of supervised release. Federal authorities issued a detention detainer. Local authorities did not honor it. Belgal walked free again under New York’s sanctuary rules that largely bar cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Just The News reported that Belgal had prior arrests, the drug case, a grand larceny conviction, and alleged associations with the Trinitarios gang while he remained on supervised release. DHS officials have said the same gang was involved in the CBP officer shooting and in other Bronx violence.
Name spellings on his records varied across documents and agencies, Belgal, Bengal, or Bergal, a detail that only added confusion to an already long paper trail.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani framed the shooting as an attack on the city’s immigrant community and described Belgal in local terms.
"A New Yorker was shot by ICE agents in Marble Hill. ICE agents surrounded the man’s vehicle before opening fire. They wore construction vests and masks that concealed their faces. There was no reasonable way to identify them as ICE agents."
Mamdani added that New Yorkers were feeling “anguish, pain, anger” and that immigrants in “the world’s city” should not wake up unsure whether they can live their lives. Protesters gathered at the hospital after Belgal was brought in.
Neighbors who lived with the consequences rejected that framing.
Migdalia Martinez, whose 12-year-old son Jacob Freytas was killed by a stray bullet in Mt. Eden gangland crossfire in July in territory linked to the Trinitarios, spoke bluntly after the ICE shooting.
"I don’t consider him a New Yorker. The only thing I do consider him as is trash, nothing else but trash. And I don’t consider New York, my home, as trash. The mayor is wrong in many ways, that’s definitely one."
Mora Rodriguez, a longtime elderly resident of Belgal’s old Inwood building, was just as direct when asked if he counted as a New Yorker.
"Absolutely not. That’s one of the reasons I think we should vote blue out. What’s going on with the legal system, the jail, letting these people go after they have a whole list of convictions. This is a criminal. Why would you let this person out? These judges are very radical. We gotta vote red."
Those voices undercut the mayor’s attempt to cast a man with an open drug case, a gun robbery conviction, and an unexecuted federal detainer as simply another neighbor caught in a raid.
Secretary Mullin tied the case to sanctuary policy in plain terms.
"Sanctuary politicians create an environment for criminal activity to thrive, not for American citizens to be safe. When you have sanctuary cities and politicians, you endanger the safety of the public."
The sequence supports the charge. A detainer after the August 2025 drug arrest went unheeded. Belgal remained free. ICE had to chase him in September, then again in Marble Hill, with a child in the car, after he had already smashed into agents according to the agency’s account.
After the shooting, the legal fight shifted. U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken temporarily blocked Belgal’s removal without a court order and barred transfer outside the New York and New Jersey districts while a detention challenge proceeds. An immigration attorney, Harold Solis, argued that a father’s presence with his son made the shooting unacceptable regardless of criminal history. ICE maintained the officers fired because they believed their lives, their partners’ lives, and the public were in danger.
Political reaction moved fast in the other direction as well. The Washington Examiner reported that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused Target of allowing ICE to use stores as “staging sites” for immigration operations, and that the Bronx shooting renewed Democratic calls to abolish ICE.
Abolish-ICE rhetoric does not erase the record in the court files: gunpoint robbery, a reduced plea, a short jail stint, probation, a fresh drug arrest involving fentanyl, cocaine, and heroin, a ignored detainer, a prior flee from ICE, and a final confrontation in which agents say he drove into them.
Belgal’s 5-year-old son was physically unharmed and placed with family. That fact does not soften the choices that put the boy in a car during a second federal arrest attempt. It underscores how long Belgal stayed free after local systems declined to hold him for immigration authorities.
Mt. Eden already buried a 12-year-old boy caught in gang crossfire. Fordham Heights had a robbery at gunpoint. Marble Hill had agents struck by a fleeing SUV and a neck wound that sent Belgal to the hospital before federal lockup. Each episode traces back to the same failure: an illegal entrant with mounting charges was released, supervised, or shielded from federal pickup until street enforcement became the only option left.
Name games on the paperwork and construction vests on the street do not change the core timeline. New York’s bail and sanctuary practices left a man with a violent and drug-related record in circulation. ICE moved to take him into custody. He drove at agents, officials say. He was shot, survived, and now sits in federal detention while a judge has paused deportation and activists demand the agency itself be dismantled.
Taxpayers and parents in the Bronx should not have to wait for the next detainer to be ignored before leaders admit the pattern.
