ICE officers shot a man in New York because they believed they were in danger, official says

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal immigration officers opened fire on a Dominican man in New York because he drove his car into officers' vehicles and they believed their lives were in danger, a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said Friday.

The 28-year-old man, whom New York City police identified as Oscar Belgal, was shot “superficially” in the neck as ICE officers attempted to arrest him, Marcos Charles said. Authorities have not released details of Belgal's condition.

Officers used their vehicles to block the man as he attempted to drive away, but he accelerated toward them, Charles said during a news conference with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin in Washington. The Department of Homeland Security said the news conference was about the “dangerous consequences of sanctuary city policies.”

“Our officers, using their training and believing that their life and the life of the partners and the general public were in danger, used their training and fired weapons,” Charles said.

Belgal had a 5-year-old boy in the car with him when the shooting happened, officials said.

Mullin said ICE agents didn’t know the child was in the car, but that Belgal “was aware” and chose to put the boy at risk by trying to evade officers.

Belgal was associated with a robbery crew that used mopeds and weapons, and was convicted of grand larceny last year and sentenced to five years of probation, Charles said, adding that he evaded officers in September when ICE tried to arrest him for deportation.

An attorney representing Belgal in a pending case did not immediately return a voicemail Friday.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, both Democrats, said late Thursday that they had pressed Mullin and Republican President Donald Trump to release Belgal, to no avail. They also urged the administration to immediately release ICE officers' body camera footage of the shooting and to halt immigration enforcement operations in the city.

Mullin said Belgal was being held in a facility outside New York City but declined to say where.

He confirmed ICE officers were wearing body cameras that were activated, but didn’t say when any footage would be released.

On Friday, New York City police released footage from its officers as they arrived at the scene following the shooting. The department previously said its officers were not involved in the arrest and not at the scene when the shooting happened.

The video shows a city officer responding to a chaotic scene where Belgal — sitting on the ground with his hands behind his back and head drooping to one side — was surrounded by several officials. The video shows officers lifting Belgal and placing him in a black SUV. Police said he was taken to a hospital.

“Yo put pressure. Put pressure,” an officer can be heard saying as the SUV reverses down the block.

New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Belgal was pulling into a parking space when a federal officer in plainclothes approached with his gun drawn, followed by another federal officer who also wasn’t in uniform. Belgal started to pull the car forward, and at least one of the officers fired seven rounds, hitting the man below his left ear.

Protesters and local officials decried the shooting as an example of the dangers of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

“There is no justification for what we have seen today,” Mamdani said late Thursday at the scene of the shooting.

Federal officers who surrounded the vehicle wore construction vests and masks, making it difficult to identify them as immigration officers, he said.

Mullin devoted much of Friday’s news conference to criticizing Mamdani and New York City’s limits on cooperation with ICE. The Democrat, who took office in January, has restricted local cooperation with immigration enforcement operations and repeatedly called for the abolition of ICE.

“Sanctuary politicians, they create an environment for criminal activity to thrive, not for the American citizens to be safe,” Mullin said.

ICE has asked local officials in New York to hold onto more than 14,000 people for federal officers to collect and place in immigration detention, he said.

“Silence. Absolute silence is what we have gotten back,” the secretary said. “Why would they release these individuals back onto the streets?”

“We’re enforcing our nation’s laws. We’re not picking and choosing,” Mullin continued. “Why is that controversial? We should all want law and order on our streets.”

Mullin also criticized the attention surrounding the case.

“This was a thug. The absolute worst of the worst,” he said. “We’re giving so much attention to this thug.”

Marcelo reported from New York. Associated Press reported Anthony Izaguirre in New York City contributed.

In this image taken from police-worn body camera video released the New York City Police Department (NYPD), law enforcement personnel tend to a Oscar Belgal, 28, a Dominican man who was shot by Federal immigration officers, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in New York, as he drove his car with a 5-year-old boy inside. (NYPD via AP)

In this image taken from police-worn body camera video released the New York City Police Department (NYPD), law enforcement personnel tend to a Oscar Belgal, 28, a Dominican man who was shot by Federal immigration officers, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in New York, as he drove his car with a 5-year-old boy inside. (NYPD via AP)

Marcos Charles, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Executive Associate Director, speaks during a news conference at ICE Headquarters, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Law enforcement work the scene of a shooting Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

People gather at the scene of a shooting as law enforcement work the area Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York City police try to block protestors near the scene of a shooting on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani talks during a news conference near the scene of a shooting on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, speaks during a news conference at ICE Headquarters, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

OSLO, Norway (AP) — Navi Pillay, a South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief whose career has spanned from defending the rights of an imprisoned Nelson Mandela to leading a panel that found that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her efforts to promote international law as it comes under attack.

Her win is sure to be seen as a high-profile rebuke to U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have both rejected the findings of the U.N. commission she led on Gaza. The leaders also have been highly critical of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Pillay has worked at both.

Hours after the award was announced in Norway, the Trump administration imposed sweeping new sanctions on the ICC as part of a campaign to dismantle the tribunal that the U.S. believes has become politicized and attempted to unfairly and illegally prosecute Americans and Israelis on war crimes charges.

On the 125th anniversary of the prize's inception, the Norwegian Nobel Committee sought "to remind the world that the rule of law, national and international, underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace and resolve conflicts nonviolently. Peace requires justice," committee Chairman Jørgen Watne Frydnes said.

Judges “guard the thin red line between order and chaos,” and the world needs jurists "of courage, vision and determination, qualities that Navi Pillay demonstrates in her work on the bench.”

In places such as Israel and in apartheid-era South Africa, she and peers took on some of the world’s most painful and sensitive legal issues and most vulnerable populations.

Pillay, 85, received the news while attending a forum in Nuremberg, Germany, where the trials of Nazi war criminals helped lay the foundations of international law. She was in the same room where the trials were held when the prize was announced.

She said efforts to weaken international criminal justice “endanger the progress painstakingly made since Nuremberg, and they risk returning us to a world in which power, rather than law, determines whose suffering matters.”

Pillay chaired the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, which was created by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council. The commission a year ago concluded Israel was responsible for genocide in Gaza with a specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.

Gaza was among Pillay’s first comments Friday after hearing she had won. “What’s happening there is genocide,” she said to more applause.

The commission also found that the Israeli president, prime minister and former defense minister "have incited the commission of genocide.” Israel, which has refused to cooperate with the commission since it was established in 2021, has strenuously denied the accusations.

Pillay has repeatedly rebuffed critics who accused her of antisemitism or turning a blind eye to the Hamas attacks in Israel. Under her leadership, the commission also issued reports accusing Hamas of war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

In an interview with The Associated Press last year, she recalled how she worked closely with some Jewish lawyers in the fight against apartheid in her native South Africa and was invited to Israel as the U.N. rights chief from 2008 to 2014.

Growing up under the harsh system of segregation influenced Pillay's interest in human rights and the law. Starting with Mandela’s presidency, South Africa’s government has openly compared the situation faced by nonwhite people during apartheid to the Palestinians’ plight.

“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,” Mandela said soon after apartheid ended.

The Nobel announcement came at another critical time for Gaza, just two days after the anniversary of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed about 1,200 people and sparked the war. Over 74,000 Palestinians have since been killed, with their territory devastated. Saturday marks a year since a fragile ceasefire took effect, while Israeli strikes continue.

Netanyahu wrote on X that the Nobel committee “has lost its moral compass” by awarding its highest honor to "a bigot who built her career around inventing and propagating blood libels against the one and only Jewish state.”

The award was announced less than three weeks before Israel’s election, in which Netanyahu is fighting to stay in power.

Pillay’s win and the new U.S. sanctions bring renewed attention to Trump’s ongoing feud with the International Criminal Court, where Pillay was a judge from 2003 to 2008.

In a video address, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration would “ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us.”

The sanctions block any assets the ICC as an institution has in U.S. jurisdictions and set a six-month timeline for American companies and individuals to wind down any business with the court.

The Nobel Committee did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment following Rubio’s announcement.

Pillay currently serves as an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice, the highest court of the United Nations, in the ongoing genocide case against Myanmar.

When countries do not have a representative on the court’s permanent, 15-judge panel, they can appoint an expert of their choice. Gambia, which launched the proceedings in 2019, selected Pillay when the country accused Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya minority group.

As a young lawyer in apartheid South Africa, part of Pillay’s work involved establishing key rights for political prisoners being held on Robben Island, which included Mandela, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize.

After apartheid ended, Mandela appointed Pillay to be the country’s first non-white woman to serve as a High Court judge.

Last year, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in the South American nation.

Machado gave Trump her Nobel medal shortly after the United States ousted then-President Nicolás Maduro. But it was largely a symbolic gesture: The Nobel Committee has said the honor itself cannot be transferred.

In Trump’s second term, he has been outspoken about his desire for the Nobel, but has expressed doubts that the committee would ever award him the prize.

“They have a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.

Four of this year's Nobels were announced earlier this week, in the categories of medicine, physics, chemistry and literature. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced Monday.

The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), whether for an individual, small group of laureates or organization.

Dazio reported from Berlin, and Keaten reported from Geneva. Associated Press journalists Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa; Ali Swenson in New York; Cara Anna in Jerusalem; Molly Quell and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands; and Mark Lewis in Stavanger, Norway, contributed to this report.

AP Nobel Prizes: https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

This story has been corrected to reflect that this is the 125th anniversary of the peace prize’s inception, not the 125th prize.

South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, speaks at the Nuremberg Forum in Nuremberg, Germany, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, following the announcement that she had been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. (Daniel Karmann/dpa via AP)

South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, sits at the Nuremberg Forum in Nuremberg, Germany, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, following the announcement that she had been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. (Daniel Karmann/dpa via AP)

South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, speaks at the Nuremberg Forum in Nuremberg, Germany, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, following the announcement that she had been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. (Daniel Karmann/dpa via AP)

South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, speaks at the Nuremberg Forum in Nuremberg, Germany, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, following the announcement that she had been awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. (Daniel Karmann/dpa via AP)

The Chairman of the Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, announces Navanethem Pillay as the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. (Javad Parsa/NTB Scanpix via AP)

FILE - UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, answers journalist's questions during a press conference at the Geneva Press Club, in Geneva, Switzerland, July 31, 2014. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP, File)

FILE - U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay, center, visits the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, in Jerusalem, Feb. 8, 2011. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner, File)

FILE - Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaks during a press conference, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Oct. 18, 2012. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP, File)

FILE - United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay, center, visits Al- Daraj Elementary Co-ed UNRWA school in Gaza City, Feb. 10, 2011. (AP Photo/Adel Hana, File)

The Chairman of the Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, announces the Nobel Peace Prize 2026 at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. (Javad Parsa/NTB Scanpix via AP)

The Chairman of the Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, announces Navanethem Pillay as the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. (Javad Parsa/NTB Scanpix via AP)

FILE - U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights South African Navanethem Pillay prior to the 23rd session of the Human Rights Council, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, May 27, 2013. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)

FILE - U.N. human rights chief Navanethem Pillay prior to the opening of a session of the Human Rights Council at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, June 18, 2012. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)

FILE - A Nobel diploma and medal are displayed, Dec. 8, 2020, during a ceremony in New York. (Angela Weiss/Pool Photo via AP, File)