NYC Mayor Mamdani Warns ICE in Letter: Stop Staging Operations in City Parking Lots or Face Court
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote to the Trump administration on November 2 warning that the city will go to court if Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) keeps using city-owned parking lots to stage immigration enforcement operations.
In his letter to senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, Mamdani said the city never authorised federal agents to use municipal property for immigration enforcement, making the practice unlawful; he said it endangers residents and sows fear among people trying to use public facilities. He asked the agencies to instruct agents immediately that they are prohibited from using any city parking lot to stage or carry out operations, saying the aim is a clear rule officers can follow rather than a dispute fought lot by lot.
The Mamdani administration has also appealed to private lot owners: on October 15, the city and more than 100 New York elected officials wrote to more than a thousand parking garage owners and operators across the city asking them not to rent or lend their property to ICE.
The Department of Homeland Security responded that ICE's presence in public parking lots is fully authorised under federal law and is standard practice for law enforcement agencies nationwide.
New York has described itself as a sanctuary city since the administration of Mayor Ed Koch in 1989, limiting how far local government cooperates with federal immigration enforcement. The Mamdani administration has repeatedly criticised the Trump administration's immigration operations in the city and called for ICE to be abolished, following an incident in which an ICE officer shot Oscar Belgal, 28, as he was collecting his five-year-old child from school. The Trump administration's July 2025 legal challenge to the city's sanctuary laws was defeated.
(Source: The Guardian)
Source: The Guardian
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：纽约市政厅。Nielsoncaetanosalmeron 摄，CC BY 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: New York City Hall. By Nielsoncaetanosalmeron, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
