New York City, New York: Mayor Mamdani Threatens to Sue Over ICE Use of City Parking Lots

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani threatened on Monday, November 2, to take the Trump administration to court if Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents keep using city-owned parking lots to stage immigration operations.

In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Mamdani wrote that ICE use of city property was "unauthorized and is therefore illegal, endangers City residents, and sows fear among those who seek to access City property." He added: "If your agents continue any unauthorized use of these lots, New York City will take legal action to prevent this unlawful commandeering of City property."

The lots named in the letter

The letter says agents have reportedly parked their vehicles and held meetings in several city-owned, unstaffed parking lots. It names a parking lot at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. It also names lots along 111th Street on the west side of Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, next door to a city-run preschool and several cultural institutions that children visit every day.

"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 letter reads, according to the New York Post.

The letter asks the Department of Homeland Security and ICE leaders to issue guidance at once telling agents they are prohibited from using any New York City parking lot to stage or conduct operations.

The mayor says it out loud in Brooklyn

Mamdani spoke about the letter at an unrelated press conference in Brooklyn on Monday morning. "Too often is ICE flouting those directives and those laws," he told reporters.

"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 said.

Washington pushes back

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told the New York Times that "ICE's presence in public parking lots is fully authorized under federal law and is a standard practice for law enforcement agencies nationwide." The spokesperson added: "Mayor Mamdani should be grateful to our brave law enforcement officers for cleaning up the streets of NYC since he won't."

A fight that started with private garages

The city-owned lots are the second front in the same fight. On October 15, Mamdani and more than 100 New York elected officials urged private parking garage owners and operators to refuse ICE the use of their property. That letter went to more than a thousand garage owners and operators in the city.

"Our neighbors should not live in fear that the parking lot down the block could become a staging ground for an operation that puts their communities at risk," Mamdani wrote in the October 15 letter. "Do not rent your property to ICE. Do not lend it to them. Tell them they are not welcome."

The Trump administration recently lost a legal challenge to New York City's sanctuary laws, a case it filed in July 2025. No new lawsuit over the parking lots had been filed by Monday. The letter sets the condition for one: if agents keep using the lots, the city says it will go to court.