ICE shooting triggers clashes in New York (VIDEOS)
Anti-ICE demonstrators have clashed with police in New York City after federal agents shot and wounded a migrant from the Dominican Republic during his arrest.
Scuffles erupted in the Bronx late on Thursday outside a hospital where a man had been taken earlier in the day after suffering a gunshot wound to the neck.
Several hundred protesters gathered near the medical facility, chanting obscenities and slogans such as “From Palestine to Mexico, all these walls have got to go” and “We want ICE off our streets. No justice, no peace.”
At one point, the crowd attempted to dismantle the barricades set up by the police and engaged in a shoving match with officers. Several people were arrested, according to media reports.
The US Department of Homeland Security, which incorporates ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), said in an earlier statement that the shooting happened on Marble Hill Avenue at around 4 PM local time on Thursday.
Federal agents opened fire when they tried to detain a “criminal illegal alien” who was in a car with a child in the back seat, the statement read. It didn’t explain what provoked the shooting.
The 28-year-old man had “a prior criminal conviction for grand larceny, and multiple prior arrests for assault, robbery, possession of drugs and weapons possession,” the DHS said.
The wounded migrant is expected to survive. The child, said to be his five-year-old son, was unharmed in the incident.
Democratic New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the shooting to launch another attack on ICE, saying in a post on X that he would call US President Donald Trump and demand an end to the agency’s activities in the city.
“I will not stand by while ICE agents terrorize our communities... 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 wrote.
Mamdani later arrived at the scene and addressed the protesters, saying that “as somebody who is proud to be an immigrant in this city, I know that these kinds of raids, the kind of terrorizing… leaves the 3 million migrants of this city asking if they are safe here, if they belong here, if this too can be their home here.”
The shooting in New York comes less than a month after a similar incident in Austin, Texas, in which ICE agents wounded a Venezuelan national while he was delivering food in his car. The man was later charged with assaulting an officer.
The Democrats have repeatedly called for the abolition of ICE since a wave of nationwide protests over the fatal shootings of two US citizens by federal immigration agents in Minnesota in January.
White House border czar Tom Homan defended ICE and its conduct last month, saying: “You can hate us all you want. We’re not going anywhere.”
