Justice for Oscar Belgal, Abolish ICE and Fire Tisch!

We join the voices in New York City and the nation in denouncing the most recent ICE shooting and subsequent kidnapping of 28-year-old Dominican immigrant and father Oscar Belgal.

On October 8, Oscar was surrounded by ICE agents and shot at 7 times while in his vehicle during a busy afternoon when many children and parents were around. One of the shots hit his neck. Eyewitnesses describe how he was held by ICE agents and NYPD officers as 20 minutes passed before any ambulance arrived to the crime scene. Oscar was taken to nearby Allen Pavilion hospital and then later kidnapped by ICE agents to an unknown location. We demand his immediate freedom.

The shooter has been identified as Kevin Brodowsky. Also on the scene was notorious ICE goon Brenden Cuni who was wearing a construction vest, and was brandishing a AR-15-style rifle, putting the lives of children and passerby at risk. Cuni has terrorized people in NYC (Chinatown, Bushwick, Queens), in Columbus, Ohio, and in Minneapolis, where he participated in the brutal assault and dragging of a pregnant woman across the snowy pavement. Brenden is of Dominican & Puerto Rican descent, which shows that people of any ethnicity can be class traitors and oppressors. We join the mass clamor demanding that Kevin be tried for attempted murder.

This reckless act is a continuation of Trump’s murderous and racist anti-immigration policies currently affecting our communities.

We condemn the attempts by NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch and DHS to justify this brutal act by citing Oscar’s previous interactions with the police and his affiliations. This is a blatant act of racism. No criminal record and interaction with the repressive state justifies being shot by ICE in front of your kid. We demand DHS retract that statement and stop criminalizing Dominican and Haitian immigrants as well as Black people and all oppressed immigrant communities.

Furthermore, we also condemn Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s inaction for not firing Jessica Tisch and for not having taken steps to disband the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG) as he promised during his campaign. Instead, Mamdani has allowed the NYPD to continue colluding with ICE, brutalizing protestors who demand the release of our neighbors and demand ICE out of our streets. Mayor Mamdani claims to be on the side of immigrants but actions speak louder than words: we are fed up with promises from “progressive” politicians who are afraid to break their ties with the two-party system and the status quo.

As Dominicans in the diaspora, we stand in solidarity with Haitian immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent in Dominican Republic, who are also victims of government profiling and repression in the island. What happened to Oscar on October 8, has been happening to Haitian and Black Dominicans for decades in DR. The Dirección General de Migración (DGM) operates as ICE does, raiding public and private spaces and terrorizing neighbors to disappear them into the immigration enforcement system.

We stand against ICE the same way we stand against DGM, and all repressive forces.

Finally, we call on all workers, parents, high school, and college students in NYC to unite, organize and mobilize, and take part in school walkouts, teach-ins, boycotts, ICE watch in their communities, occupations, strikes, and all actions necessary until NYC is free of ICE terror.

We demand:

1- The immediate release of Oscar Belgal to his family

2- Fire Jessica Tisch

3-The end of NYPD collaboration with ICE

4- Mamdani to fulfill his promise to disband the SRG

5-Abolish ICE once and for all

Compas de la Diáspora, October 10, 2026

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