By Julia Harte and Kristina Cooke
NEW YORK, Oct 8 (Reuters) – US immigration agents shot and wounded a man on Thursday in his car with a child present in the Marble Hill neighborhood of New York City, according to the mayor, city police and eyewitnesses.
“Early reports indicate agents surrounded (the man) and a 5-year-old child in his car before firing multiple rounds,” New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a statement.
The mayor said the child was believed to have been physically unharmed.
“This is an unconscionable and incredibly serious situation,” Mamdani said, adding he planned to speak to President Donald Trump and “demand that he ends all ICE enforcement actions in our city. I will not stand by while ICE agents terrorize our communities.”
The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, said in a statement ICE officers were conducting a “targeted enforcement operation” in the Bronx, New York, to arrest a man from the Dominican Republic with a prior criminal conviction.
“During the incident, an ICE officer discharged his weapon and the criminal illegal alien was injured,” DHS said, adding that ICE officers rendered immediate aid. “The individual is alive and at a local hospital.”
The shooting occurred at around 4 p.m. ET (2000 GMT), DHS said.
Working at a restaurant near the shooting, Pedro Almarez said he heard shots fired and went outside to see several officers wearing ICE attire at the scene.
“There were a lot of ICE officers, three or four cars,” Almarez told Reuters by phone, adding the man who was shot appeared to be between 20 and 30 years of age. He said NYPD officers arrived about 10 minutes later. He said the man was only removed from his car after an ambulance arrived.
At the shooting scene, where police strung yellow crime-scene tape to cordon off a city block, a woman standing on a balcony overlooking the area told officers they were “taking our children,” according to a Reuters witness.
Federal immigration agents have shot at least 21 people since Republican President Donald Trump returned to office, 7 fatally, sparking protests across the US. Critics contend that Trump’s push to ramp up deportations has led to an increasing number of violent confrontations, and accuse the administration of resisting accountability for the agents involved.
(Reporting by Julia Harte in New York and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani, Chris Reese, Donna Bryson and Christian Schmollinger)
Comments