ICE Agent Opens Fire on Vehicle Carrying Five-Year-Old; Federal Law Enforcement Expansion Spurs Another Fatal Controversy

On the afternoon of October 9, 2026, an agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) opened fire on a civilian vehicle carrying a five-year-old child in the Marble Hill neighborhood of the Bronx, New York, striking 28-year-old Dominican national Oscar Bergal below the left ear.

New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch reported on the case that evening, stating that at approximately 4 p.m., plainclothes federal law enforcement officers armed with guns approached Bergal as he was parking. When Bergal drove the car forward, at least one officer fired seven shots. The NYPD statement said Bergal was conscious and receiving treatment at a nearby hospital; the child in the vehicle was uninjured and was being cared for along with relatives.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the operation was a "targeted enforcement action" against a 28-year-old Dominican national with a criminal record, and stated that an officer "discharged a firearm," referred to the man as a "criminal illegal immigrant," and said the incident remains under investigation.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called U.S. President Trump after the incident, demanding that he "end all ICE enforcement operations in New York City." Speaking at the scene in the evening, he said: "I will never stand by and watch ICE agents plunge our communities into panic."

He further said: "Today's shooting only confirms what we have long known: they act with impunity, sowing chaos and terror across the country, killing far more of our neighbors than they claim to save." Mamdani called for ICE to be "abolished."

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul spoke separately with Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin that evening. In a statement, she said: "I express the anger of New Yorkers and urge them to cease ICE enforcement operations in New York." She also called for the release of body camera footage from the officers at the time of the incident "to clarify the facts and seek the truth."

City Councilmember Carmen DeLaRosa, who represents the district where the incident occurred, said: "We are heartbroken and angry." According to Al Jazeera reporting, protesters gathered at the scene that evening, with some clashing with police.

Al Jazeera reported that ICE doubled its personnel in the first year of Trump's second term, surpassing 22,000 agents by January 2026; under the tax bill Trump signed last year, the agency received $75 billion in funding over four years, making it the most generously funded federal law enforcement agency in the United States, and was assigned the task of deporting one million people per year.

In January of this year, federal immigration enforcement officers shot and killed two American citizens in Minneapolis—Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, who was shot and killed by an ICE agent on January 7; and Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, who was shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent. Federal officials had characterized Good as a "domestic terrorist," but on-scene video raised questions about the claim that she "attempted to ram her vehicle into law enforcement officers." The federal government subsequently excluded local agencies from the investigation, refused to conduct a civil rights investigation, and deployed hundreds of additional agents to Minnesota, bringing the total number of agents there to 3,000; a wave of protests subsequently spread to hundreds of cities across the United States. Trump attributed the shift in American public opinion toward the agency to "unfair media coverage" and called on DHS and ICE to publicize their "arrested violent criminals."