The owner and agents of a Jamaica, Queens, apartment building agreed to pay a $55,000 fine and undergo anti-discrimination training to settle claims they urged tenants to report “immigration” and other “suspicious criminal activity” to a federal hotline and threatened tenants that immigration authorities were coming for them, state officials said Wednesday.
Parsons 88 Realty LLC, owner of 88-06 Parsons Blvd., and its superintendent installed a sign in the building’s lobby urging tenants to contact the “Homeland Security Investigations Tip Line” and agencies including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the New York State Division of Human Rights complaint filed in the case. The settlement states the tenants are predominantly ”not from the United States.”
The complaint said the sign violated the state’s Human Rights Law, which protects against discrimination based on national origin, “by presupposing that tenants who immigrated to the United States did not have lawful residency status.” The sign also sent “the message that tenants born outside this country were not welcome even if they were law-abiding members of their community,” officials said.
“New York remains committed to protecting anyone who is discriminated against or harassed because of their national origin, citizenship or immigration status,” state Division of Human Rights Commissioner Denise Miranda said in a statement. “It is unacceptable, unconscionable and illegal for housing providers to discriminate against their tenants simply because of where they are from. We will continue our work to call out all forms of hate, bias and discrimination across our state.”
Adam Leitman Bailey, an attorney for defendant Zara Realty Holding Corp., said the sign wasn’t intended to scare tenants. Bailey said the defendants settled the case to avoid a costly trial.
“There’s no racism and no intentions to evict anybody,” he said. “The sign gives no incentive for someone to want to leave their apartment.”
Under the settlement terms, the defendants admitted no wrongdoing. The complaint was initially filed in 2018 and the settlement was signed and dated Feb. 2, 2025, but only announced Wednesday.
Officials said the sign — using language that “diverges” from that on the federal hotline website — encouraged people to call ICE to report “suspicious criminal activity” and listed “immigration” among reportable matters, including terrorism, weapons, drug smuggling, human trafficking and other offenses. The complaint alleged the defendants “exploited the rising xenophobic tide to intimidate” immigrant tenants.
“The negative association suggests that being born in a country other than the United States is undesirable irrespective of an individual’s lawful residency status,” the complaint stated. The businesses own “several thousand residential units in New York City and Long Island,” according to the Division of Human Rights.
The owner and superintendent “harassed and intimidated witnesses” cooperating with the division’s investigation, according to the complaint. They allegedly threatened the complaining tenants, falsely telling them “immigration authorities” had arrived at the building and were “rounding up tenants.”