The criminal illegal migrant shot by an ICE agent in Manhattan last week still has the bullet lodged in his neck, can’t eat and has to drink bathroom sink water under “horrific’’ jail conditions, his lawyers say.
Convicted armed robber Oscar Belgal, 28, of the Dominican Republic is being forced to endure the torturous situation while being held in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn – the same lock-up where alleged healthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione and deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro are housed.
“Mr. Belgal is living through an unimaginable nightmare,” said the criminal’s lawyers, from the Legal Aid Society and Make the Road New York, in a joint statement.
“While he is currently in solitary confinement, a bullet remains lodged in his neck, the left side of his face is numb, and he can barely hear out of his left ear.
“Doctors have told him he urgently needs surgery, but that the procedure was too dangerous to perform Thursday evening without a specialized surgeon present,” Belgal’s lawyers said.
“Although he was instructed to return to the hospital this week, he has been left in the dark about whether that surgery will even happen. He is also suffering from a shoulder wound caused by shattered glass during the incident.”
The lawyers claimed that Belgal also “has not eaten a single meal since Thursday” and “has been told that the only water available to him comes from a bathroom sink.”
During his time alone in his cell, he has been “forced to relive the terrifying moments of being shot,” they said.
Belgal, 28, a reputed member of the Trinitarios street gang, picked up his son in the Marble Hill neighborhood shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday when plainclothes ICE agents stormed his SUV and fired into the vehicle when he tried to pull away, wounding him in the neck.
Marcos Charles, the head of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, said Belgal “accelerated” at the agents, “smashing” into two of them — an allegation not captured on the CCTV footage of at least part of the incident obtained by The Post.
Authorities said Belgal entered the US illegally in 2022 and had amassed an alarming rap sheet, including a 2023 armed robbery conviction and a 2025 bust for allegedly selling fentanyl, cocaine and heroin.
Former neighbors told The Post he used to terrorized them with a machete.
“The deliberate indifference Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed toward Mr. Belgal when he was shot on Thursday, and the treatment he has endured in detention since, are further examples of the cruelty and disregard for basic human dignity that have long defined this agency,” the shot man’s lawyers raged in their missive.
“We will continue to fight for Mr. Belgal’s immediate release from detention and to ensure that he receives the medical care, due process, and basic human dignity to which he is entitled under the law.”
