Read our feature article “Only Those With the Courage To Fight Have the Courage To Win: Combat and Resist ICE Terror!” here.
A federal judge temporarily blocked the deportation of 28-year-old Oscar Belgal on October 9 after militant demonstrations broke out protesting his attempted murder and abduction by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with the support of the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
Belgal’s attorneys said he was arrested without a valid warrant and filed a petition to block his deportation, which the judge agreed to.
According to his attorneys, Belgal still has a bullet lodged in his neck after ICE shot him on October 8 and is in urgent need of surgery. He has been placed in solitary confinement and has not received a proper meal or adequate access to water since being shot, they reported on October 12. The left side of his face where he was shot has become numb.
ICE and NYPD have tried to justify his torture by citing his criminal history. Belgal’s lawyer said in a statement, “Regardless of whether or not someone has a criminal history, it is not lawful, it is not okay, to shoot a father in the afternoon with his son in the backseat.”
ICE agents shot Belgal in his neck while he was driving in a residential area in Upper Manhattan on October 8 while schools nearby were dismissing students. Belgal’s five-year-old son was in the backseat and narrowly escaped injury.
After the shooting, the NYPD took Belgal to the nearby NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, which does not have a trauma center, as he bled from his neck. He was denied treatment, with the hospital claiming the procedure was too dangerous to be performed without a specialized surgeon, according to his attorneys.
While protesters amassed outside the hospital, engaging in combative actions against NYPD and ICE, police officers helped clear the road for ICE. Agents took Belgal to Delaney Hall in Newark, NJ, an ICE concentration camp where a mass hunger and labor strike took place earlier this year in response to moldy food and physical and psychological abuse by the guards.
Belgal was later taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where he remains in solitary confinement, in urgent need of medical treatment and without adequate food or water.
Protests have continued throughout the city, demanding Belgal’s release, an end to ICE terror, and for Mayor Zohran Mamdani to fire NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch for her role in facilitating ICE terror. Mamdani said he had no plans of firing Tisch during a press conference on October 13 and defended her work.
Image: Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse, 2012. Credit: Ken Lund, retrieved from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).
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