immigration

DHS and New York City Clash Over the Marble Hill ICE Shooting as a Federal Judge Blocks Oscar Bergal's Removal

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says the man an ICE agent shot in New York on 8 October put his own 5-year-old son in danger. New York’s mayor says the agency should leave the city. Between them sits a federal judge’s order that keeps the man, Oscar Bergal, in the United States for now.

The shooting happened just after 4 pm on Thursday in Marble Hill, in northern Manhattan, during a targeted arrest by plainclothes ICE agents. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at least one agent fired seven rounds. Bergal, 28, was hit once in the neck and is expected to recover. His son was in the back seat and wasn’t hurt. Court filings spell the name Bergal; DHS and the NYPD have used Belgal.

Two accounts

DHS says Bergal, a Dominican national it says was in the country illegally, refused orders to get out of his car, accelerated, struck two ICE vehicles and drove toward officers, and that the agents didn’t know the child was there. A deli worker told CBS News the car was driving away from the agents. Surveillance video shows the agents approaching the car before it moved. ICE says the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations are investigating.

The NYPD wasn’t part of the operation. Its officers answered a 911 call, found Bergal on the ground and drove him to hospital themselves. The department released their body camera footage on Friday. Tisch said Bergal pleaded guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny in 2023 and got five years’ probation, and has a drug sale case from 2025 still pending.

Washington against City Hall

The fight moved quickly from the street to custody. ICE took Bergal from the hospital on Thursday evening, and his lawyers said they couldn’t find him. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said a two-hour call with the President and Mullin failed to secure his release, and called for ICE to be abolished. Governor Kathy Hochul asked for the footage to be released and for ICE enforcement in New York to pause.

Mullin’s version, given at a press conference on Friday: the President offered to hand Bergal to the NYPD if the city pursued charges, and Mamdani replied that the city wouldn’t detain him. DHS blames the city’s sanctuary policies for Bergal’s release after an NYPD arrest in December 2023. New York City limits how far its police and jails help federal immigration enforcement, and that limit is now the centre of a dispute about one man.

What the courts are doing

On Friday US District Judge J. Paul Oetken ordered that Bergal not be removed from the United States without the court’s permission, and barred moving him outside the New York City area and New Jersey. Judge John Cronan set a hearing the same afternoon, where Bergal’s lawyer argued the arrest had no valid warrant. He has since been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. ICE says it will pursue criminal charges and continue removal proceedings.

The shooting itself is a second track. Attorney General Letitia James called for a full investigation and said she trusts Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, whose office says it is establishing the facts. Local prosecutors can investigate a federal agent. A charge is harder: federal officers prosecuted under state law can move the case to federal court and claim immunity under the Supremacy Clause for acts within their duties.

The wider pattern

Shootings during enforcement have shaped ICE’s budget before. Federal agents’ fatal shootings of two US citizens in Minneapolis in January set off the 76-day lapse in Homeland Security funding, when Democrats refused to fund ICE without new conditions. Republicans then funded ICE and the Border Patrol through reconciliation to 2029, outside the annual bills where such conditions get written, as covered in our ICE funding post.

So Congress has little leverage left over ICE before 2029. City Hall has its own rules and its police. For now the court orders in Manhattan decide what happens to Bergal next.