An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on the scene of a shooting in upper Manhattan on Thursday has repeatedly been accused in federal court of unlawful arrests and using force during arrests in New York and Minneapolis, a WIRED investigation finds.
On Thursday afternoon, ICE agents shot a man, identified by city authorities as Oscar Belgal, in Manhattan’s Marble Hill neighborhood, near the Bronx. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said agents surrounded the man’s car, in which a 5-year-old child was sitting, before firing multiple rounds—as many as seven, witnesses told local media. Belgal, the New York Police Department said, was hospitalized after reportedly being shot in the neck. The child appeared unharmed.
Footage from the scene shows a man in a high-visibility yellow construction vest brandishing a modified AR-15-style rifle with a pistol grip, sling, and holographic sights. That man, according to court documents, social media posts, and publicly available personal information reviewed by WIRED, is Brenden Cuni—an ICE supervisor with the agency’s National Fugitive Operations team who has been involved in several arrests in the New York City region and Minneapolis during Operation Metro Surge last winter.
Cuni identified himself as an ICE agent to NYPD officers, a law enforcement source tells WIRED, and was the only federal agent captured on video brandishing a weapon on scene. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security claims that ICE agents were attempting to apprehend an undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic with a prior conviction for grand larceny.
A WIRED review of federal court cases, social media, and other public records suggests that Cuni has repeatedly been at the center of illegal ICE street arrests in New York and beyond. Court filings accuse him of using a Taser on a handcuffed man, while activists have alleged he is one of the agents seen forcing a pregnant woman to the ground during a Minneapolis operation. In recent months, federal judges have repeatedly found arrests involving Cuni unlawful. One judge called an arrest warrant he signed “fraudulent,” while another said that video evidence contradicts his sworn account of an arrest; in a third case, the government withdrew his sworn statements as inaccurate.
Cuni has been a DHS agent for nearly a decade. According to court declarations he signed, Cuni began his federal law enforcement career with Customs and Border Protection as a Border Patrol agent in San Diego in 2018 before becoming a deportation officer in 2020. In December 2024, he was promoted to a supervisory detention and deportation officer, and in May 2025, he joined the National Fugitive Operations team.
Cuni’s work history before his time with DHS remains unclear. Felician University, a private Catholic university in New Jersey, listed him as a member of its 2018 baseball roster. On that site, Cuni lists his home town as New Rochelle—a suburb just north of the Bronx.
