ICE Enforcement Faces Court Challenges in New York, Texas

Court petitions challenge ICE actions

Lawyers for Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old man shot by ICE agents in Marble Hill, New York, are asking a court to release him. They allege agents fired into his vehicle without identifying themselves or showing documentation. Belgal’s 5-year-old son sat in the back seat. The Legal Aid Society represents him.

Attorneys Perry McAninch and Elyssa Williams said ICE officers shot Belgal in the neck, failed to provide immediate medical assistance and continue to hold him at a facility they describe as notorious for medical neglect. A bullet remains lodged in his neck, they said, and his medical needs haven’t been met. “The Court must intervene and order his immediate release,” they said.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the new allegations. It has previously said agents fired because they believed their lives were in danger, and alleged Belgal has ties to the Trinitarios gang. Last Friday, a judge temporarily barred officials from deporting Belgal or transferring him outside the Southern or Eastern Districts of New York or the District of New Jersey without prior court approval. He remains detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Ernesto Zuniga Hilario is separately asking a federal judge to help secure his return to the United States after immigration authorities removed him to Mexico. His attorneys filed a writ of habeas corpus Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, alleging officials deported him without a valid removal order or a meaningful chance to understand or challenge the legal basis.

Conflicting accounts of removal

Zuniga Hilario says he last entered the United States without inspection around 2008 and lived near Lometa, Texas. He is married to Obdulia Cervantes Vega, whom the filing identifies as a lawful permanent resident, and has four U.S.-citizen children.

The Department of Homeland Security said ICE arrested him on September 6 after the Lampasas County Sheriff’s Office conducted a traffic stop. A spokesperson said Zuniga Hilario signed a voluntary departure form in blue ink on September 6 and returned to Mexico on September 16. The spokesperson said he entered the country illegally “at an unknown date and time by sneaking across our border on foot,” adding: “Breaking our country’s laws is always a bad decision.”

The petition tells a different story. Zuniga Hilario repeatedly declined voluntary departure, it says, because he wanted to present his case and expected to appear before an immigration judge. Officers apprehended him while he traveled with his family to a therapy appointment, court filings say. They held him at the T. Don Hutto detention facility in Taylor, Texas, then took him by bus to an airport and flew him to Mexico City. He says he didn’t leave voluntarily.

His attorneys allege he had no expedited removal order or order from an immigration judge. If officials reinstated an earlier removal order, they say, they had to notify him and give him a chance to contest it. The petition acknowledges a possible jurisdictional hurdle: officials had already removed him when his attorneys filed the case. Newsweek said it emailed his legal team Wednesday and was awaiting a response.

A state-backed record of enforcement cases

Disappeared in America, launched with backing from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration and the Illinois Accountability Commission, documents nearly 500 accounts from immigrants and U.S. citizens who say the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement detained them, deported them, separated them from families or otherwise harmed them. The interactive database may include photographs, video and audio recordings. Organizers say they intend to build a public historical record that can grow over time.

The site says the second Trump administration has deported more than 605,000 people, detained 400,000 through ICE and killed 33 people. The database includes Lorenza Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, whom the report said ICE agents shot dead in Texas and Maine, respectively, in July; and Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, U.S. citizens federal agents fatally shot in Minneapolis in January.

The state’s Democratic governor created the Illinois Accountability Commission in October 2025 amid Operation Midway Blitz, ICE’s enforcement activity in Chicago and the surrounding area. Pritzker, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and other leaders criticized the operation. Local protesters clashed with federal agents, and local law enforcement stepped in to try to keep the peace. Agents faced accusations of abuses during raids of Chicago apartment buildings and in their treatment of local police and reporters.

The Department of Homeland Security, the wider Trump administration and their supporters say ICE targets dangerous offenders, including people with alleged gang ties or convictions for violent offenses. An ICE spokesperson told Newsweek that officers receive ongoing training and called them “heroes” who put their lives on the line to arrest people accused of serious crimes. The federal government has highlighted arrests on a webpage and says people who enter the country illegally have broken the law and are eligible for enforcement.