Immigrant rights activists looked at the ICE shooting Thursday in the Bronx and saw a case of out-of-control agents endangering the life of a 28-year-old man and his 5-year-old son.
The Department of Homeland Security saw an undocumented gang suspect with a lengthy rap sheet who had previously evaded officers, resisted arrest and driven his Honda crossover SUV directly at them, forcing them to open fire in self-defense.
Oscar Bergal, the Dominican man, was shot in the neck. His son was uninjured.
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Another American community was left riven over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its aggressive attempts to carry out the nation’s immigration laws.
Department of Homeland Security officials said Bergal, with a string of run-ins with authorities, was a poor martyr for the anti-Trump forces, and said it was the very sanctuary policies Democrats champion that have emboldened people such as Bergal to resist arrest and create dangerous encounters like the chaotic arrest and shooting Thursday.
“Sanctuary politicians, they create an environment for criminal activity to thrive,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, however, said he wants more, not less, sanctuary. He spent two hours on the phone Thursday with Mr. Mullin and President Trump, trying to get them to release Bergal onto his streets and get ICE agents off them.
“Immigrant New Yorkers belong here. ICE does not,” he said Friday.
Mr. Mullin chafed over the idea of labeling Bergal a New Yorker.
“I’m sorry, he’s from the Dominican Republic. He came to this country illegally a few years ago, and ever since he’s committed crime after crime after crime,” the secretary said.
A federal judge has barred Bergal’s deportation for now and ordered that he be kept either in the New York City area or in New Jersey.
Mr. Mullin said Bergal came to the U.S. illegally during the Biden administration.
His criminal record includes convictions for grand larceny and theft, along with prior arrests for robbery, armed theft, drug distribution, possession of stolen property, and assault.
He was sentenced to five years’ probation after his conviction.
The Department of Homeland Security said he runs with the Trinitarios gang, some of whose members were involved in the shooting of an off-duty U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer last year in New York.
Mr. Mullin said Bergal is believed to have information about that crime, which is why Homeland Security Investigations — ICE’s criminal division — had sought him.
ICE tried to arrest him last month, but he “evaded.”
On Thursday, ICE officers closed in, using their vehicles to box in Bergal’s Honda, Mr. Mullin said. The secretary said Bergal refused orders to comply, accelerated his vehicle to smash into the ICE vehicles, then “weaponized his vehicle and proceeded to accelerate going towards other officers.”
Mr. Mullin said New York should have turned Bergal over to ICE after a 2023 arrest, but “chose to release him back onto the streets.”
Mr. Mullin said officers were unaware the child was in the vehicle and blamed Mr. Bergal for putting his son in danger.
“We identified ourselves and gave lawful orders as we approached the vehicle. There was no question who was approaching the vehicle. Not to mention, he knew he was wanted. He fled once he knew he was wanted. It wasn’t like it was unexpected to him. When you flee, especially for a criminal like him, he knows that officers aren’t going to give up on him,” Mr. Mullin said.
Harold Solis, an attorney for Mr. Bergal, disputed that account.
“Regardless of whether or not someone has a criminal history, it is not lawful, and it is not OK to shoot a father in the afternoon with his son in the back seat,” he said after a court hearing Friday. “That is not how we settle legal disputes in this country,” he said outside the federal courthouse where he was battling to prevent deportation.
He said Bergal was “still walking around with a bullet” in his body 24 hours after the shooting. He questioned the hospital’s decision to discharge a man in that condition.
The Department of Homeland Security has come under intense criticism for shootings involving vehicles. In January, an ICE officer fatally shot Renee Good, an American citizen, after a confrontation in her SUV in Minneapolis. As an ICE officer was ordering her to get out, she accelerated, at which point the officer opened fire.
After ICE shootings during other traffic stop encounters where the men shot were not the targets for arrest, ICE briefly limited traffic stop arrests.
More recently, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division adopted a policy of not pursuing fleeing vehicles, according to The Associated Press.
Mr. Mullin seemed to characterize the shooting Thursday as something beyond a usual deportation case because of Bergal’s connections to the gang and last year’s shooting of the off-duty CBP officer.
That the Homeland Security Investigations division was seeking him indicates the case was criminal, making Thursday’s incident akin to a local police fugitive operation.
Mr. Mullin called Bergal “the worst of the worst,” suggesting he meets even the most stringent of thresholds that even some Democrats have said should be deported.
The secretary complained about Mr. Mamdani’s statement that ICE has “killed far more of our neighbors than they could ever have claimed to save.”
He pointed to dozens of homicide suspects, kidnappers and other serious felons ICE has asked New York state to turn over.
“Seven out of the 10 safest cities in the U.S. cooperate with ICE,” the department said in a memo detailing the Thursday shooting.
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