Mayor Zohran Mamdani demanded President Trump free an illegal immigrant wounded by ICE in the Bronx, despite the man's criminal record and alleged gang ties.
An ICE agent shot and wounded a 28-year-old illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic during a targeted arrest attempt in the Bronx on Thursday afternoon, sparking street protests and a late-night political offensive from City Hall.
Fox News reported that the man was the driver of a vehicle in the Marble Hill area when agents moved to take him into custody around 4 p.m. A 5-year-old boy believed to be his son sat inside the vehicle and was not hurt. Federal officers rendered aid, and the wounded man was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital before ICE later moved him out.
Mayor Mamdani used the shooting to demand an end to ICE enforcement in New York and pressed President Trump to release the suspect. That request went nowhere. Governor Kathy Hochul also urged a halt to ICE operations in the state and called for any body-camera video to be made public.
Federal officials did not cast the man as a bystander caught in a random stop. DHS described him as a wanted illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic with a prior grand larceny conviction and previous arrests tied to assault, robbery, drug possession, and weapons possession. Officials also alleged ties to the Trinitarios gang.
The New York Post identified the suspect as Oscar Belgal, a Dominican national with pending drug charges, and reported the confrontation near 2 Marble Hill Ave around 4:20 p.m. NYPD records already showed a local arrest on Dec. 7, 2023, followed by release several days later.
DHS put the blame for that earlier release on New York’s sanctuary rules.
"This criminal illegal alien was arrested by the NYPD on December 7, 2023, but was released into the community a few days later by reckless Democrat sanctuary policies that put American lives at risk"
That timeline matters. Local police had already had him in custody. City policy put him back on the street. ICE later tried to finish the job federal law required.
NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said scene evidence showed at least one ICE agent fired seven rounds and struck the driver in the neck below his left ear. The boy in the vehicle was uninjured and placed with a family member.
"Based on evidence collected at the scene, we know that at least one ICE agent discharged the seven rounds, striking the driver in the neck below his left ear,"
DHS said agents gave immediate aid, confirmed the man was alive at a local hospital, and noted that the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations were on scene. The shooting remains under investigation. Officials did not release a full public account of the seconds before gunfire.
"ICE officers immediately rendered aid. The individual is alive and at a local hospital. The FBI and HSI are on the scene. The incident remains under investigation. More information will be shared as it becomes available."
What is already clear is the sequence city leaders want voters to ignore: a wanted illegal immigrant with a serious record, a child in the car, a federal arrest attempt, and a political class racing to indict the agency instead of the rap sheet.
At a late Thursday night news conference, Mamdani condemned the shooting and said he had spoken with President Trump for about two hours. He demanded an end to ICE enforcement in the state, said New York City wants agents gone, and confirmed ICE had transported the wounded man out of the hospital. He also claimed ICE acts with impunity and spreads chaos.
"All they do is terrorize this city,"
He went further, calling the shooting proof of a long-running indictment and branding the agency rotten at its core. In remarks carried by the Post, he stacked the demand into a full abolition pitch: get ICE out of neighborhoods, hospitals, and streets, keep agents away from children, and abolish the agency.
That is the mayor’s governing theory in plain English. A federal agency tried to arrest a wanted illegal immigrant with a violent and drug-related history. City Hall’s answer was to free the suspect and shut down the enforcers.
Governor Hochul said she spoke with Trump and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin the same night. She voiced outrage, pressed for a halt to ICE operations in New York, and asked that any body-camera footage be released so the public can see the facts.
"Tonight, I spoke with President Trump and DHS Secretary Mullin about the shooting in Marble Hill. I expressed outrage on behalf of New Yorkers and urged them to halt ICE enforcement operations in New York. I also 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."
Body-camera video, if it exists, should be reviewed. So should the man’s full criminal file, the Dec. 2023 release, and the sanctuary rules that put him back in circulation. A freeze on immigration enforcement is not a truth-seeking step. It is a political reward for the same system that already failed once.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside Allen Hospital after the shooting. Crowds filled nearby streets, chanting “ICE off our streets,” “No justice, no peace,” and “From Palestine to Mexico, all these walls have got to go.” Police set barricades. Shoving broke out. Water bottles flew. Officers made some arrests as the demonstration turned chaotic.
The Post put the crowd near 300 at the hospital. The political message from the street matched the message from City Hall: treat ICE as the offender and treat the arrest target as the cause.
Missing from that chanting was the basic enforcement question. The man was a wanted illegal immigrant with prior arrests and alleged gang ties. A small child was in the vehicle. Federal officers were executing an immigration arrest. The public still lacks a complete account of the trigger pull. None of that justifies turning the aftermath into a campaign to empty the field for the next wanted offender.
Mamdani’s release demand failed. Trump took the calls from both the mayor and the governor and did not scrap the operation or hand back custody as City Hall wanted. DHS kept the focus on the man’s status, his record, and the earlier sanctuary release.
That split is the real story under the sirens. State and city leaders moved within hours to stop federal immigration arrests. The White House and DHS treated the case as what it was on paper: a wanted illegal immigrant, a planned arrest, a shooting under investigation, and a child who walked away uninjured because agents still did the job local policy had deferred.
Open questions remain. Officials have not released the man’s full medical condition after the hospital transfer. They have not said whether charges tied to the shooting or the underlying case have been filed. They have not published body-camera video. And DHS has not given a second-by-second public narrative of the threat that preceded the shots. Those gaps are real. They do not erase the record already on the table.
When sanctuary rules recycle criminal illegal immigrants back onto city streets, federal agents inherit the danger, and New York’s leaders still blame the arrest.
