Mayor Zohran Mamdani threatened Monday to haul the Trump administration to court if ICE doesn’t stop its “unlawful commandeering” of city-owned property during immigration operations.
Hizzoner, in a letter to US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, warned that if the feds continued to park immigration vehicles in city parking lots, the Big Apple will haul them to court.
“ICE has not secured any authorization from the City to use these lots for immigration enforcement. To be clear: the City does not authorize ICE using its property in this manner,” the missive reads.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a news conference on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, in New York. Matt Roberts/Shutterstock
Attorney General Todd Blanche (C), President Donald Trump (L) and Markwayne Mullin attend a cybercrime roundtable at the White House on Oct. 21, 2026. SHAWN THEW/EPA/Shutterstock
Mamdani said at an unrelated press conference in Brooklyn Monday morning that “too often is ICE flouting those directives and those laws.”
“This letter makes very clear that ICE has no right to use any city property or lots for anti-immigrant operations, and that we are willing to go to court if they continue to do so,” he told reporters.
According to the letter, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have “reportedly parked their vehicles and conducted meetings in several City-owned, unstaffed parking lots, including in a parking lot at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and recently, in parking lots along 111th Street on the west side of Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, right next door to a City-run preschool and several cultural institutions that children visit every day.”
Masked federal ICE agents arrest a protester blocking vehicles at Delaney Hall in Newark, N.J., Thursday, May 28, 2026. Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Post
The letter comes two weeks after a request from the Mamdani administration to private parking lot owners not to allow ICE to use their property.
It also comes on the heels of a shooting of a Dominican migrant, Oscar Belgal, 28, who was here illegally, by ICE agents during an immigration arrest in The Bronx.
The mayor acknowledged Monday that his crusade against federal immigration officials using city property for enforcement actions could put Parks Department workers in the middle of the battle over local sanctuary laws.
It would force the city workers to confront ICE agents, who are often in civilian clothes and heavily armed, and press them to produce ID and a judicial warrant to use parks parking lots.
“I have full confidence in them and the entire city apparatus to respond to those kinds of situations,” Mamdani insisted.