A federal judge appointed by Barack Obama ruled Friday that illegal immigrant Oscar Bergal cannot be deported to the Dominican Republic while his lawyers challenge his detention, one day after an ICE agent shot him during a Bronx enforcement operation.
Daily Mail reporting described U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken’s order as a move “in order to preserve the court’s jurisdiction,” blocking immediate removal and limiting transfers to facilities in the Southern or Eastern Districts of New York.
The ruling landed amid street protests, sharp attacks on federal agents from New York’s top Democrats, and ICE’s account that Bergal, 28, drove at officers with a five-year-old boy nearby. Taxpayers and lawful residents now watch a familiar pattern: a criminal illegal immigrant survives a high-risk encounter, local leaders blast the people enforcing the law, and a federal court slows the path out of the country.
The shooting occurred Thursday around 4 p.m. during an ICE enforcement operation in the Bronx. Agents were targeting Bergal as part of work that included probing Trinitarios gang involvement in a moped shooting in the city.
ICE alleged Bergal “weaponized his vehicle” and drove it at agents. He was struck in the neck. His injuries were described as non-life-threatening. Bullet holes could be seen in the back of the SUV. His five-year-old son sat in the backseat of a car nearby.
Bergal was taken to a hospital, released hours later, and moved into ICE custody. His attorneys said a fleet of ICE vehicles transferred him to an unknown location and that his name did not appear on ICE’s online detainee portal. In a Friday morning court filing, they said they had “grave concerns for his health and well-being.”
Fox News reported that U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken issued a two-page order temporarily blocking deportation without court approval while the detention challenge remains pending, and that the order also bars transferring him outside the Southern or Eastern Districts of New York or the District of New Jersey without prior court approval. That account also described Bergal as a 28-year-old Dominican national who allegedly refused orders, accelerated toward officers, and tried to flee with the child in the vehicle.
Marcos Charles, executive director of ICE removal operations, made the agency’s next steps plain.
“will continue to try to remove him from this country as quickly as possible following his charges.”
Charles also said the government would pursue criminal charges against Bergal and explained the custody decision in blunt terms.
“because of Bergal’s lengthy criminal history and known fleeing, we placed him in a detention facility outside of the state of New York.”
That out-of-state placement sits in tension with the geographic limits in the judge’s order, a conflict left unresolved in the immediate aftermath.
DHS described Bergal as an illegal immigrant with a lengthy criminal history, including grand larceny, assault, and robbery, plus known affiliations with the Trinitarios gang.
In 2023 he was arrested on a robbery charge, later pleaded guilty to grand larceny, and received probation. He later faced a drug-sale charge that remained unresolved after he pleaded not guilty. Fox’s account added arrests involving assault, robbery, drugs, and weapons alongside the alleged gang ties.
None of that record stopped New York’s political class from treating the encounter as an indictment of federal enforcement rather than a case study in why repeat offenders keep landing in front of officers.
Cases like this keep landing in the same institutional thicket seen when a federal judge halted deportation of an illegal immigrant shot by an ICE agent in Austin, where courtroom process again slowed removal after a violent enforcement clash.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not wait for a full public record before attacking the agency. He spoke after the shooting and at protests that drew thousands against ICE activity in the Bronx, where anti-ICE activists clashed with law enforcement.
On social media he called the incident “unconscionable and incredibly serious” and said his “thoughts are with the injured New Yorker and his family tonight. We are praying for his recovery.”
His public line went further in person.
“This city wants ICE out,” “All they do is terrorize this city.”
Mamdani also said, “There is no justification for what we’ve seen today,” and, “Let me say this plainly, what happened today was an outrage.” He called ICE “rotten to the core.”
He said he told President Donald Trump and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin that ICE agents should leave the scene entirely and that the agency should stop enforcement actions in New York City. He described that request as unsuccessful and said he tried to negotiate Bergal’s release.
He framed the policy fight in absolute terms.
“We know, and I have said this directly, whether to the president or to the public, ICE undermines public safety. It makes us less safe.”
Governor Kathy Hochul used social media to say she had spoken with Trump and Mullin as well.
“I expressed outrage on behalf of New Yorkers and urged them to halt ICE enforcement operations in New York.”
Hochul also said she “asked that any body camera footage of the shooting be released to the public so we can establish the facts and get to the truth.”
The sequence is hard to miss. An illegal immigrant with prior convictions and alleged gang ties is targeted in an enforcement raid. ICE says he drove at agents. Local leaders demand the agents leave the city. Then an Obama-appointed judge freezes removal while the legal fight plays out.
That same clash between enforcement and courtroom delay runs through larger fights, including the DHS fight over third-country deportations at the Supreme Court, where the government keeps pressing for workable removal authority against constant legal resistance.
Oetken’s ruling does not decide Bergal’s long-term immigration fate. It blocks immediate deportation while the detention challenge is pending and restricts where he can be moved without further court action.
The practical effect is delay. Delay is often the whole game in immigration cases involving removable aliens with local political cover. Every week of process is another week the federal government cannot finish the job voters hired it to do.
Detention policy itself remains a national flashpoint, the kind of dispute now headed back before the justices in the fight over Trump-era ICE rules on holding illegal immigrants without bond.
Judicial friction with immigration enforcement is not limited to New York. The Justice Department has even moved to pull Minnesota judges off immigration cases after a Times interview, another sign of how raw the institutional conflict has become.
ICE’s story is operational: agents tried to take a removable illegal immigrant with a criminal record and alleged gang links off the street; he allegedly used a vehicle as a weapon; officers fired; he survived; the government wants charges and removal.
City Hall’s story is political: ICE “terrorize[s]” New York, is “rotten to the core,” and should leave entirely, even after a shooting tied to an enforcement target with a five-year-old in the vicinity and a prior record that already included grand larceny after a robbery arrest.
Those two accounts cannot both be the governing priority of a serious city. Either federal agents have a duty to arrest removable criminals, or local leaders get to treat every enforcement action as an outrage regardless of the target’s history.
Mamdani’s demand that ICE stop enforcement actions in New York City is not a narrow complaint about one shooting. It is a bid to create a de facto no-go zone for immigration law. Hochul’s call to halt operations statewide points the same direction.
Bergal’s attorneys raced to court with health concerns and a missing-portal claim. The judge answered with a jurisdiction-preserving freeze. ICE answered with a promise to keep pushing removal after charges. Meanwhile thousands filled the streets against the agency that tried to make the arrest.
Federal judges set constitutional boundaries for law enforcement in many settings, from immigration holds to search tools, as in a recent case where a federal judge found a Flock plate-reader search violated the Fourth Amendment. Boundaries are real. So is the cost when process becomes a shield for people the law already says should leave.
The people left holding the bag are not the officials at the press conference. They are the residents who live with gang violence, robbery, and drug crime while leaders argue that the agency removing illegal immigrants is the threat to public safety.
Bergal is 28. He has already cycled through robbery and grand larceny outcomes that ended in probation, then a later drug case. DHS tied him to Trinitarios activity. ICE put him on an enforcement list. The Bronx became the scene. A child was close enough to matter. Then politics took over.
Oetken’s order keeps Bergal inside the United States for now. Charles says the agency will still try to remove him as quickly as possible after charges. Mamdani wants ICE out of New York. Hochul wants operations halted and bodycam video released.
The country has seen this movie. A removable illegal immigrant with a record collides with federal officers. Activists flood the streets. Democratic officeholders attack the enforcers. A federal judge slows the exit. The underlying problem, illegal presence plus local resistance to removal, remains untouched.
When city leaders treat immigration enforcement itself as the scandal, criminals learn the real rule: stay put, lawyer up, and wait for the court clock to run.
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