A man has been shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers during an operation in New York City, prompting Mayor Zohran Mamdani to demand that President Donald Trump remove the agents from his city.
The shooting occurred at around 4 p.m. ET on Thursday in the Marble Hill neighborhood of the Bronx, the New York City Police Department wrote on X. The NYPD said it was not involved in the shooting.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to The Independent that ICE officers were conducting an operation at the time “to arrest a criminal illegal alien from the Dominican Republic with a prior criminal conviction for grand larceny, and multiple prior arrests for assault, robbery, possession of drugs, and weapons possession.”
Mamdani said that early reports indicate ICE agents surrounded the man who was in his car with a five-year-old before “firing multiple rounds.”
“We believe the child was physically unharmed,” the mayor wrote on X.
The DHS spokesperson said the man, who allegedly has ties to the Trinitarios gang, was injured after an ICE officer fired his weapon. The spokesperson did not release the name or age of the man.
“ICE officers immediately rendered aid. The individual is alive and at a local hospital. The FBI and HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] are on the scene,” the spokesperson said. “The incident remains under investigation.”
One woman who witnessed the shooting said she initially thought the four shots she heard were a car backfiring.
She then thought, “‘No, that's definitely gunshots.’ So I ran to my window and all of a sudden I saw cops running – not walking — down the street, and followed shortly thereafter by more cops, and then more cops and ICE agents.
“Everybody was running. A lot of the ICE agents were, of course, masked,” the woman told WABC. “I think it's horrifying."
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“It was really quick,” another witness told the outlet. “It was boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has demanded federal authorities explain what happened.
“We expect federal authorities to provide a full and transparent accounting of the circumstances surrounding this incident,” Hochul wrote on X. “New Yorkers deserve to know exactly what happened and why.”
Mamdani called it an “unconscionable and incredibly serious situation” and said next time he speaks to Trump, he plans to “demand that he ends all ICE enforcement actions in our city. I will not stand by while ICE agents terrorize our communities.”
Trump's massive deportation campaign has been criticized as too aggressive, with multiple shootings involving federal immigration agents making headlines.
In July, the Trump administration received fierce pushback after ICE agents fatally shot a 52-year-old Mexican man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, in Houston and a 25-year-old Colombian native, Joan Sebastian Guerrero, in Maine at traffic stops less than a week apart.
DHS said an ICE officer fired his weapon at Guerrero because he feared for “public safety,” and Salgado Araujo was shot in “self-defense.”
About half of Americans, 49 percent, believe Trump’s mass deportations targeting illegal immigrants have been too aggressive, according to a Poliitco/Public First poll released in August.
Thirty percent of respondents said his immigration crackdown has been about right, 11 percent said it hasn’t been aggressive enough, and 10 percent were unsure.
Meanwhile, DHS has defended its agents’ actions, including Thursday’s shooting.
“When dangerous illegal aliens are released back onto the streets by radical sanctuary politicians, our officers are forced to make arrests at large in the community in unpredictable and dangerous environments.
“Our officers should not have to risk their lives, and innocent Americans should not have to face unnecessary danger, because sanctuary politicians refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement,” the DHS spokesperson told The Independent.
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