Mayor Zohran Mamdani and more than 100 elected officials across New York state are calling on private parking lot owners and operators across the five boroughs to ban U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from using their property.<\/p>\n
Mamdani and the officials released a letter Friday morning asking owners of parking lots and garages in New York City not to rent, lend or otherwise make their property available to ICE as a staging ground for immigration enforcement, and to inform the agency it\u2019s not welcome on their property.<\/p>\n
\u201cMake it known to ICE that it is not authorized to use your garages and lots,\u201d the letter says.<\/p>\n
The letter comes just over a week after ICE officers shot and wounded<\/a> Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old Dominican immigrant, in Marble Hill, blocks away from a Target parking lot<\/a> that local officials say ICE officers had been recently using as a staging ground.<\/p>\n Mamdani and the other signatories highlighted the shooting and nearby parking lot in their Friday morning letter. Several local elected officials, clergy members, and immigrant advocates also rallied outside the Target last week, calling on New Yorkers to boycott the company<\/a>.<\/p>\n A Target spokesperson previously told Gothamist that the company has no agreement with any federal immigration office. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said that ICE officers didn\u2019t use the Target parking lot as a staging ground the day Belgal was shot.<\/p>\n However, the DHS spokesperson added that ICE officers are legally authorized to use public parking lots, which they said was a standard practice for law enforcement agencies across the country.<\/p>\n The letter’s signatories also include New York state\u2019s two senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand; the U.S. House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries; and dozens of other state and local elected officials, including City Council Speaker Julie Menin and the vast majority of the City Council.<\/p>\n Parking lots and garage owners across the city and country who allow ICE to use their property have come under fire by immigration advocates in recent months.<\/p>\n The elected officials\u2019 letter specifically calls out ICE using two bank parking lots<\/a> on Northern Boulevard in Queens and a garage on Morton Street in Lower Manhattan, both sites where protests<\/a> have erupted over ICE\u2019s alleged use of the facilities.<\/p>\n \u201cEach such use, whether part of a formal or informal arrangement or no arrangement at all, gives ICE a launching point for operations that have terrified and terrorized local communities, and risks placing your property, your employees, and your customers at the center of that,\u201d the letter says.<\/p>\n In May, the owner of the Morton Street garage ended<\/a> its parking contract with ICE after local immigration activists protested the agency\u2019s presence at the site, Gothamist first reported.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are grateful for this action and invite every owner to follow this courageous example,\u201d the letter says of the Morton Street garage.<\/p>\n Local immigration activists have also in recent weeks protested<\/a> a parking lot in Tribeca where they claim ICE is parking its vehicles. And the Hudson River Park Trust, a publicly owned corporation overseen by the state and city, let its long-standing parking contract with DHS expire<\/a> in June after the local news outlet Hell Gate<\/a> reported on it, prompting public outcry<\/a>.<\/p>\n City government has also \u201cacted with urgency\u201d over the last year to ensure that its property, including its parking lots and garages, aren\u2019t used for federal civil immigration enforcement actions, in accordance with city sanctuary laws, according to the letter.<\/p>\n