NEW YORK — Oscar Belgal had picked up his 5-year-old son from school and stopped at McDonald’s, his lawyers say, before parking by a fire hydrant near home. Then a masked man with a drawn gun came to the car window. Nearly a week later, the bullet that struck him below the left ear is still in his neck.
Belgal, 28, a Dominican national, was shot on Oct. 8 in Marble Hill during what Immigration and Customs Enforcement called a targeted arrest. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Hector Gonzalez temporarily barred his deportation and his transfer outside the federal districts of New York and New Jersey, ABC News reported, and asked the government to explain why it believes mandatory detention is warranted.
Two accounts of that afternoon have not been reconciled. The Department of Homeland Security says Belgal “weaponized his vehicle” when agents tried to box him in, and ICE official Marcos Charles said Belgal accelerated toward officers and knew his son was in the car, though agents did not. Belgal’s lawyers at the Legal Aid Society say the agent never identified himself, smashed the window and fired into the car, and that ICE arrested him without a warrant.
NYPD surveillance footage described by ABC News shows two plainclothes officers approaching the parked SUV with guns drawn. It is unclear what they said. Belgal then backs out of the spot as one armed man punches the driver’s window until the glass breaks, and he drives off. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the city’s cameras did not capture the shooting itself. At least one officer fired seven rounds, Fox News reported.
DHS has pointed to a prior grand larceny conviction, earlier arrests and an alleged tie to the Trinitarios gang. Belgal denies any gang involvement, his lawyers say ICE has produced no evidence of one, and none of it addresses what happened at the car window.
His lawyers say he is receiving only ibuprofen, has lost feeling on the left side of his face and is held in a segregated unit at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Another judge issued a similar block on his removal last week.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani called on the federal government to remove ICE from the city. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin responded by attacking New York’s sanctuary policies at a Friday news conference. The shooting came less than three weeks after ICE shot a Venezuelan delivery driver in Austin.
The agent who fired has not been named in the coverage reviewed, and the footage stops before the shot.
