# ICE Shooting of Oscar Belgal On **Thursday, 8 October 2026, around 4 p.m.**, an [[ICE]] officer shot **Oscar Belgal**, a 28-year-old Dominican man, in **Marble Hill** — the small piece of Manhattan attached to the Bronx. A **five-year-old boy was in the car** and was not hit; he was released to a relative. Belgal was shot below the left ear, survived, and was treated at a hospital. [[Zohran Mamdani]] said federal authorities removed him from the hospital late that night and took him into custody. ## The two accounts | Source | Account | |---|---| | [[Department of Homeland Security]] | A "targeted enforcement operation" to arrest a "criminal illegal alien" with a grand larceny conviction. An ICE officer "discharged his weapon." DHS did not describe what led to the shooting, and blamed "reckless sanctuary policies" | | NYPD (Commissioner Jessica Tisch) | Plainclothes officers approached the car **with a gun already drawn** as Belgal pulled into a parking space. He began to drive forward. **At least one officer fired seven rounds** | The gap between those two is the whole story, and it is not a gap about motive — it is a gap about sequence. DHS's statement describes an outcome without a trigger. The city's police commissioner supplies the trigger and it is a drawn weapon preceding the movement that was given as the reason for firing. ## Response [[Zohran Mamdani]] called the shooting an outrage and said there was **"no justification"** for it, and said he spent two hours pressing [[Donald Trump]] and Homeland Security Secretary [[Markwayne Mullin]] to release Belgal and to halt enforcement operations in the city. [[Kathy Hochul]] delivered the same message to Trump and Mullin by phone. Mullin's own public comment addressed a narrower question — that ICE did not know a five-year-old was in the car when the officer fired. ## Pattern This is the fourth entry in the vault's ICE-shooting series and the third in which the person shot **survived and was moved from a hospital into immigration custody**. Compare: - [[ICE Shooting of Ruben Martinez]] (March 2025) — US citizen killed; family not told for nearly a year; grand jury no-bill. - [[ICE Shooting of Wilber Garces Perez]] (September 2026) — survived, discharged into custody with the bullet still in his back; the officer had been issued a body camera and was not wearing it. - [[ICE Shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis]]. The recurring mechanics across all of them: an enforcement encounter that escalates in seconds around a vehicle, a departmental statement that omits the sequence, and a hospital-to-custody transfer that removes the person from the reach of local officials and the press. The New York case adds a fifth element the others lacked — a **police commissioner publicly contradicting the federal account** on the same day. > [!warning] Early and unresolved > Written 2026-10-11 from reporting three days old. No investigation has concluded, no officer has been named, and the seven-round count and the drawn-weapon sequence come from the NYPD's account rather than from footage or a filing. Belgal's whereabouts in custody were not confirmed in the reporting used here. Heather Cox Richardson's letter of 9 October 2026 described the wound as being to the neck; the Associated Press, citing police, places it below the left ear. ## See Also - [[ICE]] — the agency, and the arrest-quota increase that preceded this - [[ICE Shooting of Wilber Garces Perez]] · [[ICE Shooting of Ruben Martinez]] · [[ICE Shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis]] - [[Markwayne Mullin]] · [[Zohran Mamdani]] · [[Kathy Hochul]] - [[Department of Homeland Security]]