On Oct. 8, an ICE officer fired seven shots at a vehicle in the Marble Hill neighborhood of New York City during an attempted immigration arrest. Inside were 28-year-old Dominican immigrant Oscar Belgal and his five-year-old son.
Belgal was struck in the neck. His five-year-old son was physically unharmed, but the psychological consequences were devastating. His mother, Arianna Montero, said the child has been experiencing nightmares and has stopped speaking since witnessing his father being shot.
Federal officials say Belgal drove toward agents and endangered their lives. Questions remain about the encounter, including whether the plainclothes officers were clearly identifiable.
But the shooting raises a larger question: Why are immigration arrests on American streets increasingly resembling combat operations? Are we fighting a war? And if so, against whom?
Belgal’s shooting came nine months after two U.S. citizens were killed in Minneapolis during federal immigration enforcement operations.
On Jan. 7, Renée Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old mother, was fatally shot by an ICE officer. On Jan. 24, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was killed by Border Patrol officers.
Both deaths sparked questions about the use of force, official accounts of the encounters, and the need for independent investigations. Neither victim was an immigrant facing deportation. Yet both lost their lives during immigration enforcement operations.
And now, another man has been shot with a young child just feet away. This followed the Sept. 20 shooting of Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan DoorDash delivery driver, in Austin, Texas. Federal authorities allege that Garces Perez struck an ICE officer with his vehicle’s side mirror while attempting to flee and later tried to hit an officer with his car. Garces Perez disputes that account, saying an unmarked federal vehicle struck his car before an agent shot him in the back. The officer who fired was not wearing a body camera.
We are told these operations are necessary to enforce immigration laws and protect public safety. Federal authorities argue that officers face dangerous suspects, including people who resist arrest or use vehicles as weapons. Those risks cannot simply be dismissed. Law enforcement officers have a right to protect themselves and others from imminent threats. But immigration enforcement is civilian law enforcement, not warfare.
So why are Americans seeing masked federal agents carrying AR-15-style rifles, conducting heavily armed operations in residential neighborhoods, and sometimes firing multiple rounds during attempted arrests?
What determines when such weapons and tactics are necessary? What alternatives are considered before an encounter becomes potentially deadly? And who independently examines those decisions afterward?
The Department of Homeland Security’s own use-of-force policy establishes that deadly force must be objectively reasonable and necessary to protect against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury. Fleeing alone does not justify shooting someone. These standards matter because the power to arrest is not the authority to kill.
Another troubling dimension to this debate is the following: According to the National Immigration Project, at least 28 people had reportedly died in ICE custody in 2026 as of Oct. 5. ICE reported 33 detainee deaths in 2025, the highest annual total in more than two decades.
These deaths are not all shootings, nor do they share identical circumstances. But they raise another question about the government’s responsibility for people whose liberty it has taken away.
When someone dies in federal custody, what independent examination determines whether appropriate medical care, supervision, and safeguards were provided? And when an immigration operation ends in gunfire, how quickly does the public receive the evidence necessary to evaluate the official explanation?
We can recognize the government’s authority to enforce immigration law without accepting that every enforcement tactic is necessary or proportionate. We can recognize the dangers officers sometimes face while insisting that their decisions remain subject to scrutiny. And we can acknowledge that some people targeted for arrest have criminal histories without treating those histories as justification for whatever force is subsequently used against them.
America is not a battlefield. Its streets are not combat zones. Immigration officers do not encounter enemy combatants. They are individuals with legal rights, regardless of nationality or immigration status.
Renée Good was an American citizen. So was Alex Pretti. Oscar Belgal is a Dominican immigrant who survived being shot while his young son sat nearby.
Different people. Different circumstances. But the same fundamental question: If U.S. ICE is enforcing immigration laws rather than fighting a war, why are some of its operations ending in gunfire — and what is being done to ensure that an arrest does not become a death sentence?
Felicia J. Persaud is the founder and publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com, the only daily syndicated newswire and digital platform dedicated exclusively to Caribbean Diaspora and Black immigrant news across the Americas.
