A Dominican illegal immigrant with armed robbery and drug-dealing arrests was shot by ICE in the Bronx after ramming agents, and neighbors say he is absolutely not a New Yorker, rejecting Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s defense.
ICE agents tried to arrest Oscar Belgal, 28, in Marble Hill on Thursday afternoon. Belgal accelerated his parked vehicle straight at them, smashing into two agents. An agent then shot him in the neck. He survived.
His 5-year-old son sat in the back seat and walked away unharmed. Belgal later left the hospital for federal custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn after a Friday court hearing. The New York Post detailed the full sequence and Belgal’s record.
Marcos Charles, head of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, described what happened next.
"Accelerated" at the agents, "smashing" into two of them.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said agents wore body cameras. He tied the case to New York’s sanctuary rules that block local cooperation with federal immigration holds.
"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."
Mullin added that Belgal was believed to hold direct or indirect knowledge of the July 2025 shooting of an off-duty Customs and Border Protection officer at Fort Washington Park. Two illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic carried out that attack; one drew a 15-year sentence this week. DHS officials linked the same gang network to the CBP case.
Federal sources say Belgal entered the United States illegally around 2022 with a migrant caravan and never encountered Border Patrol. Roughly a year later he robbed a victim at gunpoint in Fordham Heights.
According to the criminal complaint, Belgal drove along Morris Avenue with two people in the back seat, turned, pointed a gun, and demanded jewelry or he would shoot. The victims handed over jewelry and about $500 cash. Police arrested him in December 2023. He was released without bail.
In April 2025 he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of fourth-degree grand larceny. A judge sentenced him in January to one month in jail and five years of probation.
In August 2025 police arrested him again, this time for allegedly selling fentanyl, cocaine, and heroin. Those charges were not bail-eligible. Prosecutors won the highest level of supervised release. ICE issued a federal detainer seeking custody. Local authorities did not honor it.
ICE tried to pick him up in September. He fled. Thursday’s attempt was the second try. Security footage captured agents approaching the car around 4 p.m. with guns drawn. Seven bullets later smashed through the vehicle’s front, side, and rear windows.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani framed the shooting as an attack on a city resident. He told reporters ICE agents surrounded the vehicle before opening fire while wearing construction vests and masks that hid their faces.
"A New Yorker was shot by ICE agents in Marble Hill. There was no reasonable way to identify them as ICE agents."
Mamdani went further, casting the episode as collective trauma for immigrants.
"You are hearing from New Yorkers right now, anguish, pain, anger, at the fact that here in this city, the world’s city, immigrants have to wake up every morning and not know if they can live the lives that they should be able to live."
Neighbors rejected that label outright. Migdalia Martinez, whose 12-year-old son Jacob Freytas was killed in July gang crossfire while riding a bike in Mt. Eden, territory linked to the Trinitarios, spoke bluntly.
"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.
"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."
Mamdani’s habit of elevating contested narratives has drawn repeated pushback, including when Jewish leaders blasted the mayor for turning the Oct. 7 anniversary into an attack on Israel.
New York’s sanctuary laws largely bar local police and jails from cooperating with ICE detainers. Mullin said that policy let Belgal walk free after the August drug arrest despite the federal hold. The same pattern of reduced charges and quick release followed the earlier gunpoint robbery.
Protesters gathered at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital after the shooting. Federal officers later moved Belgal into custody. NYPD bodycam footage showed officers arriving to find ICE agents already tending the wounded man while the child screamed nearby.
The mayor’s office has faced other accountability fights this fall. A judge forced the administration to scrap bungled second-home tax notices after the city sent flawed paperwork. Separate criticism has mounted over foreign-policy remarks, with an Israeli UN envoy saying Mamdani hijacked the Oct. 7 anniversary and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier calling the mayor out by name at the United Nations for fueling antisemitism.
Even fellow Democrats have broken with him at times, as when a New York Democrat publicly challenged Mamdani’s Oct. 7 comments while Schumer and Jeffries stayed quiet.
Belgal remains in federal detention. His open drug case continues. ICE still lists him as a target tied to the broader CBP officer shooting investigation. The body-camera video has not been released.
New Yorkers who bury children killed in gang crossfire and live with open-air drug markets do not need lectures about who counts as one of their own. They need the revolving door locked and the detainers honored.