An ICE officer attempting to arrest an illegal immigrant with a lengthy criminal record ended up shooting into a vehicle and wounding the man Thursday afternoon in New York City.
Local news reports said a 5-year-old was in the back seat of the vehicle at the time of the shooting.
The boy wasn’t hit by any bullets, and the migrant, who Homeland Security said was a citizen of the Dominican Republic, survived the shooting and was taken to a hospital.
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Homeland Security said the wounded man was the target of the arrest and was associated with the Trinitarios gang. That was the gang whose members were involved in a shooting attack on an off-duty Customs and Border Protection officer last year.
The migrant in Thursday’s incident had a conviction for grand larceny and prior arrests for assault, robbery, and drug and weapons possession.
DHS said he had been in custody of the New York Police Department in 2023 but was released into the community under “reckless Democrat sanctuary policies that put American lives at risk.”
Thursday’s shooting is the latest in a series of bloody confrontations between immigration officers and illegal immigrants and U.S. citizens, who have clashed with the Trump administration in an attempt to resist the president’s mass deportations.
Immigration activists say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has become unhinged in its pursuit of deportations.
“ICE is a rogue, unaccountable, violent, and racist plague on our communities,” said New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman on Thursday. “Our hearts are with the father they shot, and the little boy who reportedly witnessed this horror.”
But DHS blamed the shooting on those sanctuary policies.
“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,” the department said.
“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 department said.
DHS said the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations, ICE’s investigative arm, were on the scene to conduct a probe.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he had called President Trump about the shooting.
“When we speak, I will demand that he ends all ICE enforcement actions in our city. I will not stand by while ICE agents terrorize our communities,” he wrote on social media.
“Get ICE out of our neighborhoods. Get ICE out of our hospitals. Get ICE off our streets. Get ICE away from our children. Abolish ICE,” he concluded.
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