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On Saturday night, Harry Styles asked a sold-out Madison Square Garden crowd to turn their attention to Oscar Belgal, the 28-year-old man who was shot by ICE in his car in the Bronx, New York City, earlier this week while his 5-year-old son was in the backseat.
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“I just want us to take a moment to think about Oscar Belgal tonight,” said Styles, guitar in hand before performing “Sign of the Times,” one of the final songs on his Together, Together setlist on Saturday (Oct. 10). Concertgoers captured the moment and uploaded the clip to TikTok, as they’ve done with many of Styles’ interactions with fans throughout the star’s 30-night residency at the Garden.
“I want us to just think, [to] remember, to just look after each other,” Styles told the audience in a speech in which he didn’t say “ICE,” but seemingly referenced the situation with ICE — and the administration’s deportation agenda — after saying Belgal’s name.
“It is up to us to make the cities that we live in places we want to see,” Styles said. “It’s up to us to make the world a place that we want to see, that we want to give to our children. So please continue looking after each other, and remember, your friends, the people you love, the people who don’t look like you and aren’t born where you are from: they deserve respect, love, dignity.”
“Please get home safely and look after each other,” Styles urged the crowd.
On Thursday, Belgal was backing his car into a parking spot in the Marble Hill neighborhood with his young son in tow when he was surrounded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in plain clothes. His vehicle started to move forward, and he was shot in the neck, according to NYPD commissioner Jessica S. Tisch, who says at least one ICE officer fired seven shots.
City police, who are not involved in federal immigration enforcement, arrived at the scene after hearing a report of shots fired and transported Belgal to the hospital. Belgal is now being held at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, while the child is safe and in the care of a family member.
Federal officials described Belgal as an “illegal alien gang member” from the Dominican Republic who refused to get out of his car and “smashed into two government vehicles.”
Tisch reported Belgal has had two prior arrests in New York City: “One for robbery in 2023, in which he pleaded guilty to fourth-degree grand larceny and received five years’ probation, and one for criminal sale of a controlled substance in 2025, which is still pending.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani held a press conference on Thursday, declaring, “What happened today was an outrage.” He stated, “There is no explanation for these tactics. There is no explanation for federal officers firing this many rounds into a car that has a 5-year-old in the car. There is no explanation.”
Mamdani said, “ICE agents surrounded the man’s vehicle before opening fire. They wore construction vests and masks that concealed their faces. There was no reasonable way to identify them as ICE agents. School had just gotten out. The street was crowded with families and children. When ICE agents opened fire, a 5-year-old child — a 5-year-old child — was in the backseat of the car. Thank God that child is physically unharmed.”
“Tonight, a 5-year-old child sits traumatized and terrified,” the mayor said at the time. “Tonight, millions of our neighbors are wondering whether they will be safe on our streets, in our schools, at their work sites. Tonight, New Yorkers across the five boroughs are asking whether their civil liberties will be respected, whether law and order is supposed to look like a man carrying a long gun, wearing a mask.”
Mamdani added, “I also want to say something on a personal note. I stand here not just as the mayor of our city, but as someone who is proud to be an immigrant in our city. And I know that these kinds of raids, this kind of terrorizing of this city, leave the 3 million immigrants of this city asking if they are safe here, if they belong here, if this, too, can be their home. We will not normalize ICE’s viciousness. We will not accept its cruelty.”
Styles’ historic concert residency at Madison Square Garden, where he performs Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays through Oct. 31, resumes with night 22 on Oct. 14.
He recently extended his touring plans into 2027 with a run of stadium dates in several more North American cities, including Phoenix, Dallas, Los Angeles, Toronto, Atlanta and Chicago, before the trek’s summer European leg.
Styles’ fourth studio album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in March, led by the Hot 100 chart topper “Aperture.”
