A federal immigration officer in The Bronx shot a man Thursday afternoon, according to police, eyewitnesses and the Department of Homeland Security.
The man was treated at a nearby hospital, officials said Thursday night.
Eyewitnesses described a chaotic scene unfurling on a busy street in the Marble Hill section around 4 p.m., as a slew of New Yorkers were getting home from work and school. As shots rang out, bystanders sheltered in neighboring businesses, the eyewitnesses said.
“What happened today was an outrage,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said late Thursday night.
“When ICE agents opened fire, a 5-year-old child — a 5-year-old child — was in the back seat of that car,” he said. “Thank god that child is physically unharmed.”
The mayor said he had spent two hours on the phone with President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin in a failed attempt to get the man released. Instead, Mamdani said, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had “whisked him away” from the New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital in Upper Manhattan.
Iris Rosa, a school therapist, said after she emerged from a nearby shop, she saw a man bleeding on the ground in front of a car, while agents milled around, one holding a small child.
“He was all full of blood,” she said, while the child an agent held was quiet. “How could you do this? What is going on? And then I’m looking at the baby.”
In a statement posted to X Thursday night, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the shooting, saying ICE was “conducting a targeted enforcement operation” to arrest a person from the Dominican Republic who they said had a conviction for grand larceny “multiple prior arrests for assault, robbery, possession of drugs, and weapons possession.”
“During the incident, an ICE officer discharged his weapon and the criminal illegal alien was injured,” the statement read. “ICE officers immediately rendered aid. The individual is alive and at a local hospital. The FBI and HSI are on the scene. The incident remains under investigation.”
Stephani Ferrer, 30, who lives on Marble Hill, said she heard multiple shots and called 911, watching the scene from one of her bedroom windows until they carried the man away by his arms and legs.
“He was disoriented, I think because one of the guys that was holding him next to him was trying to keep him aware, trying to keep him awake by just doing some taps on the cheek,” she told Documented and The City Reporter. “You know, like, ‘hey buddy,’ like ‘stay awake, don’t fall asleep.’”
In a statement posted to X, the NYPD confirmed federal agents were behind the shooting and took the victim to the hospital. “The NYPD was not involved in the incident and was not on scene at the time of the shooting,” they said.
By Thursday evening a crowd of protesters had gathered at the scene, while NYPD officers and caution tape blocked off the street. The man’s dented car could still be seen blocking West 225th Street at Marble Hill Avenue. Two agents from the Department of Homeland Security were canvassing the area for video footage.
At an impromptu protest at the scene Thursday night elected officials and immigrant advocates gathered to denounce the shooting.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat told the crowd the child was safe with other family members and that he had tried to visit the wounded man in a nearby hospital and been barred from talking with him by ICE agents.
“The family is shaken…by this terrible horrible shooting,” he said.
Another crowd of protesters gathered outside the nearby New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital where the man was said to have been taken, as police and officials from Mayor Mamdani’s office stood at the perimeter.
Protesters tried to block a car of federal agents leaving the hospital, and police officers pushed demonstrators aside to clear the way, making several arrests.
The shooting occurred not far from the rooftop parking deck of a Target store where, Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson said later that night, immigration agents sometimes muster before heading into The Bronx to make arrests.
A video posted to social media appeared to show the chaotic aftermath, with a crowd gathered as NYPD officers rushed to a car and carried a man, seemingly unconscious, out of it and into the back of a law enforcement vehicle.
“Put pressure,” one officer is heard to say as they load the man into the back seat.
Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, told Documented and The City Reporter that he spoke with the family of the shooting victim.
“Thankfully, the father is alert, from what I understand. Shot in the neck, but alive, which I’m thankful for, and his child is with the family, said Williams. “But I don’t trust the investigation that the federal government is going to try to do.”
Mamdani called for ICE to be abolished and, referring to striking images of one of the agents standing at the shooting scene in a yellow construction vest and holding a rifle, said New Yorkers would now question “whether law and order is supposed to look like a man carrying a long gun, wearing a mask.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul said she had talked with Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Mullin about the shooting.
“I expressed outrage on behalf of New Yorkers and urged them to halt ICE enforcement operations in New York,” she said in a statement. “I also asked that any body camera footage of the shooting be released to the public so we can establish the facts and get to the truth.”
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