ICE Guns Down Car With Child Inside

Police escort a handcuffed man across a city street — Photo: lev radin / Shutterstock

An ICE agent fired seven rounds into a car carrying a 5-year-old child in the Bronx, wounding the driver and setting off a furious clash between City Hall and the Trump administration over immigration enforcement in New York City.

Quick Take

ICE agents shot and wounded 28-year-old Oscar Belgal during an arrest operation in Marble Hill on October 8
A 5-year-old child sat in the back seat when the agent opened fire
Mayor Zohran Mamdani demanded President Trump pull ICE out of New York City entirely
DHS says Belgal is an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic with a criminal record
DHS walked back an early claim tying him to the Trinitarios gang

The Shooting in Marble Hill

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents moved in around 4 p.m. on October 8, wearing construction vests and masks as they surrounded a car in the Marble Hill section of the Bronx. New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Belgal began pulling the car forward before an agent fired seven rounds, hitting him just below the left ear. A 5-year-old child was riding in the back seat the entire time.

Belgal was hospitalized and listed as conscious. The shooting happened on a residential block in the middle of the afternoon, the kind of ordinary New York street where neighbors were out and about. That timing and location is a big reason the video and eyewitness accounts spread so fast and drew crowds to the scene within hours.

Mamdani Draws a Hard Line Against ICE

Mayor Mamdani wasted no time. He called the shooting “unconscionable” and told reporters at a late-night news conference that “ICE is rotten to its core”. In his written statement, he said early reports showed agents surrounding the man and the child before firing multiple rounds, and announced he would press the president to pull federal agents out of the city altogether.

Mamdani followed through, telling reporters he had personally called President Trump to demand an end to “all ICE enforcement actions” in New York City. Governor Kathy Hochul added her own pressure, saying immigrant communities were “terrified” and that New York was “demanding answers” about what exactly happened on that block.

DHS Lays Out Its Case for the Operation

The Department of Homeland Security tells a different story about who was in that car. The agency says ICE officers were carrying out a “targeted enforcement operation” to arrest Belgal, describing him as a criminal illegal alien from the Dominican Republic with a prior conviction for grand larceny and multiple arrests for assault, robbery, drug possession, and weapons possession.

DHS initially went further, alleging Belgal had ties to the Trinitarios gang, a violent street organization with a long history in the Bronx. That line disappeared from a later, revised version of the department’s statement without explanation. Dropping a serious allegation after the fact invites fair questions, but it does not erase the criminal history DHS says it can document through court and arrest records.

There are growing calls for transparency Friday morning after an ICE agent shot a man in Manhattan, with his 5-year-old son in the backseat of his car.

The Department of Homeland Security said the man was an "illegal immigrant" with a long history of run-ins with police.…

— Jeffrey Guterman (@JeffreyGuterman) October 9, 2026

Mamdani said he spoke directly with both President Trump and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin that evening, pushing for Belgal’s release. Those conversations went nowhere. DHS, for its part, says the shooting remains under investigation and has promised more details once that review is complete. Until then, neither a full account of the agent’s decision to fire nor a court finding on Belgal’s record is settled public fact.

That unresolved middle ground is exactly where this fight is playing out. A sitting mayor is demanding the federal government stand down enforcement in America’s largest city over one incident, while DHS insists its agents were pursuing a man it says has a documented criminal history, not a random bystander. Both things can be true at once: the image of a child in that car is disturbing, and the administration’s push to remove people it says have serious criminal records is not, by itself, unreasonable policy. The investigation, not the press conferences, will determine whether the force used that afternoon was justified.