Mamdani Threatens Legal Action if ICE Keeps Using New York City Parking Lots
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has warned US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that the city will sue if its officers keep using city-owned parking lots without authorization. The dispute adds to tension between city hall and the Trump administration over immigration enforcement.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has told the Trump administration in a letter that the city will go to court if officers of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continue to use city-owned parking lots for their operations. The mayor said the use is unauthorized and therefore illegal, endangers residents and spreads fear among people who need to access city property. The letter seeks to make federal authorities end the practice.
Demand for guidance
The letter calls on the Department of Homeland Security and other ICE officials to immediately instruct agents that they may not use any New York City parking lots to stage or carry out operations. Mamdani wrote that if unauthorized use continues, the city will take legal action to stop what he described as unlawful commandeering of city property.
New York has been a sanctuary city for immigrants since the administration of Mayor Ed Koch in 1989. The Trump administration recently lost a legal challenge to the city's sanctuary laws, which was filed in July 2025.
Earlier steps
The Mamdani administration has criticized ICE activity in the city and called for the agency to be abolished. That criticism followed the shooting of Oscar Belgal, 28, by an ICE officer while Belgal was picking up his five-year-old child from school. His lawyers claim the agent, who wore plainclothes, did not identify himself before running up to the car, smashing the windows and firing several shots into the vehicle.
On 15 October, Mamdani also wrote to more than a thousand owners and operators of private parking garages in the city, asking them not to rent or lend property to ICE. More than 100 elected officials in New York have urged the same. The mayor wrote that neighbors should not have to fear that a parking lot down the block could become a staging ground for an operation.
Federal response
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the New York Times that ICE's presence in public parking lots is fully authorized under federal law and is standard practice for law enforcement agencies nationwide.
