ICE shooting of New York man in car with five-year-old sparks protests | Civil Rights News

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed a man in New York as he sat in a car with a child.

Citing an “unconscionable and incredibly serious situation,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said initial reports indicated officers surrounded the man and a five-year-old child in his car Thursday in the Marble Hill neighborhood before shooting multiple times.

The child would be physically unharmed, the mayor added, saying he had called U.S. President Donald Trump and would demand that he end all ICE enforcement in the city.

“I will not stand idly by while ICE agents terrorize our communities,” Mamdani said.

Protests followed Thursday evening, with demonstrators saying the shooting illustrated the dangers of Trump’s immigration crackdown, and scuffles with police broke out.

“We are heartbroken and enraged,” said City Council member Carmen De La Rosa, who represents the area.

Speaking at the scene in the evening, Mamdani said, “Today’s shooting is just a devastating confirmation of what we have long known, that ICE operates with impunity, that it sows chaos and terror across our country, that it has killed far more of our neighbors than it could ever claim to save.”

He demanded that the agency “be abolished.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she spoke Thursday evening with Trump and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

“I expressed my outrage on behalf of New Yorkers and urged them to end ICE enforcement operations in New York,” she said in a statement.

“I have also requested that all body camera footage of the shooting be made public, so that we can establish the facts and uncover the truth. »

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, said its agents were conducting a “targeted enforcement operation” in the Bronx around 4 p.m. to arrest a 28-year-old Dominican national with a criminal conviction and identified as Oscar Belgal by city police.

He said an officer “discharged his weapon” and the “illegal alien criminal” was injured. DHS added that the incident remains under investigation.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Belgal was pulling into a parking space when a plainclothes federal officer approached with a gun, followed by another federal officer who was also not in uniform.

Belgal began to move the car forward, then at least one of the officers fired seven bullets, hitting the man below his left ear, Tisch said, confirming that the child was unharmed and was with a parent.

According to a statement from the New York Police Department, the man remained conscious and was receiving medical treatment at a nearby hospital.

ICE under surveillance

The shooting came after months of mounting criticism of the agency.

In January, federal immigration agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis: Renee Nicole Good, 37, a mother of three, killed by an ICE agent on January 7, and Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, shot by a U.S. border agent.

After Good’s killing, Trump officials called her a “domestic terrorist,” even as video of the shooting cast doubt on their claims that she had tried to run over an agent.

The federal government removed local authorities from the investigation, rejected calls for a civil rights probe and sent hundreds of additional agents to Minnesota, bringing the total to 3,000, as protests over the killings and immigration crackdowns spread to hundreds of U.S. cities.

Trump blamed the shift in U.S. sentiment toward the immigration agency on unfair media coverage, urging DHS and ICE to publicize the “violent criminals” they arrest.

ICE’s mission is to deport one million people a year.

The agency doubled in size during the first year of the second Trump administration, reaching more than 22,000 agents as of January, and is now the best-funded federal law enforcement agency, with about $75 billion allocated to it over four years as part of a tax bill signed by Trump last year.