Off-duty border patrol agent shot in apparent random robbery in NYC park, police say

An off-duty Customs and Border Patrol agent was shot in New York City’s Riverside Park late Saturday in an alleged robbery that did not appear to target him because of his job, police said.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Monday that the perpetrators were two unauthorized immigrants who had been arrested multiple times. Both suspects have been detained, Noem said.

Noem said the first suspect is a Dominican national named Miguel Francisco Mora Nunez, 21, who had allegedly been arrested four different times in New York City. New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference Sunday that he was hospitalized with gunshot wounds that investigators believe he sustained during the incident.

Shortly after the news conference, Noem said on X that the second suspect was Christian Aybar-Berroa, who is also from the Dominican Republic. Noem said on X that Aybar-Berroa entered the country in 2022 and was ordered to leave a year later by an immigration judge.

Two law enforcement sources told NBC News that the encounter appeared to be random and that it was an attempted robbery.

Tisch said the CBP agent was sitting on the rocks along the water in the Manhattan park when two men rode up to him on a scooter and one of them got off, approaching him from behind.

One of the men took out a gun, at which point the agent realized he was being robbed and took out his firearm in defense, Tisch said. The gunman fired at the agent, who returned fire, she said.

The CBP agent was hit in the face and on the forearm, Tisch said. Mayor Eric Adams said he had visited the agent in the hospital as the agent recovered with family members. His condition was unknown.

The incident was caught on CCTV, allowing detectives to match Mora with the person shown firing at the CBP agent, Tisch said. Mora went to Bronx Care Hospital after midnight with gunshot wounds to the groin and a leg consistent with those sustained by the person who shot the agent, Tisch said, citing the security video.

Trump highlights shooter’s immigration status

Adams said Mora is known by law enforcement and has had repeated and violent past encounters with officials.

Tisch said Mora is also in the United States illegally, having entered through Arizona in 2023.

He has two previous arrests for domestic violence in New York and an active warrant after he did not show up in court in one of those cases, Tisch said. Mora was also wanted by New York police in connection with an alleged robbery in December and an alleged stabbing in January, she said.

Mora was in police custody at Lincoln Hospital, where he had surgery, Tisch said.

Adams said of Mora at the news conference Sunday: “In less than one year, he has inflicted violence in our city. And once he is charged for last night’s crimes, we will be able to add attempted murder to his rap sheet.”

President Donald Trump called the person of interest an “Illegal Alien Monster” on Truth Social on Sunday and said Democrats “have flooded our Nation with Criminal Invaders.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on X that Mora is from the Dominican Republic.

Trump has long highlighted crimes committed by undocumented migrants as reasons for harsh immigration crackdowns, despite evidence showing that the undocumented population commits fewer crimes than natural-born U.S. citizens.

Expert analysis and available data from major-city police departments reviewed by NBC News last year showed that despite some high-profile incidents, there was no evidence of a migrant-driven crime wave in the United States.

In December 2020, researchers studying Texas crime statistics found that “contrary to public perception, we observe considerably lower felony arrest rates among undocumented immigrants compared to legal immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens and find no evidence that undocumented criminality has increased in recent years.”

In the first months of his second term, Trump and his administration have been cracking down on arrests of undocumented immigrants, with promises to deport violent criminals. Most of those in immigration custody, however, do not have criminal records, according to data.

As of June, after six months of aggressive immigration enforcement, only a small fraction of undocumented immigrants known by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers as having been convicted of sexual assault and homicide had been arrested, internal ICE data obtained by NBC News showed.

From Oct. 1 through May 31, 185,042 people were arrested and booked into ICE facilities. Of that group, 65,041 had been convicted of crimes, the data showed.

Other ICE data showed that nearly half of those in ICE custody had neither been convicted of nor been charged with any crime.

In a statement Monday, acting ICE Director Todd M. Lyons said that “sanctuary city policies and the Biden administration’s open border policies allowed two criminal illegal aliens to enter this country, roam free and commit multiple crimes with no repercussions.”

“Habitual criminals who weren’t even supposed to be in the United States shot an off-duty federal officer in one perpetrator’s second armed robbery this year,” Lyons said. “I’m tremendously relieved that this CBP officer will recover, but the bottom line is that this shouldn’t have happened.”