Mamdani warns ICE to stop staging in city park lots in the Bronx and Queens or face a lawsuit

Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday told the Department of Homeland Security to order immigration agents off city-owned parking lots, warning that New York City will go to court if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement keeps using them to stage operations.

In a letter dated Nov. 2 to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, acting ICE Director David J. Venturella and Kenneth Genalo, who runs ICE's New York field office, the mayor said agents had reportedly parked vehicles and held meetings in several unstaffed city lots. The city "does not authorize ICE using its property in this manner," the letter says, calling the use unauthorized and "therefore illegal."

Which lots

• Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx: a city parking lot in the park, according to the letter.
• Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens: lots along 111th Street on the park's west side, which the letter says sit "right next door to a City-run preschool and several cultural institutions that children visit every day."

The letter asks federal officials to immediately issue guidance barring agents from using any city lot to stage or conduct enforcement operations. It does not set a deadline or say when the city might sue. Corporation Counsel Steven Banks told amNewYork that DHS is now "clearly on notice" and the city is "prepared to go to court if it does not stop."

"ICE has no right to use our property as a base for tearing families apart," Mamdani said in a statement. "Today, I'm telling DHS to order its agents off our lots. If they keep coming back, we will see them in court."

New rules for Parks workers

The administration also announced a new NYC Parks Department policy for frontline staff, part of its work under an executive order Mamdani signed in February that bars outside law enforcement from using city lots as staging grounds without a judicial warrant or another legal exception. According to amNewYork, the policy says:

• Nonpublic areas: workers ask federal officers for identification and contact the department's general counsel. Any warrant goes to agency lawyers for review; workers do not judge it themselves.
• No warrant, no entry: without a valid judicial warrant or other proper authorization, agents are not let into restricted areas. If they enter anyway, workers call 911 and document the encounter when safe, and do not physically or verbally confront officers.
• Public areas: workers notify supervisors and agency lawyers if they see federal enforcement activity and, when safe, note the number of officers and vehicles.
• Advance requests from federal agencies to use a Parks lot go to the general counsel, who decides.
• Employees who do not follow the policy could face discipline, up to suspension or termination.

The guidance also suggests Parks workers give people who encounter immigration agents information about their rights and the city's immigration legal assistance hotline once the encounter is over, amNewYork reported.

Context

The letter comes less than three weeks after Mamdani and more than 100 elected officials urged private garage and lot owners to deny ICE access, following the shooting by federal agents in Marble Hill, where agents had reportedly staged from a private lot nearby. NY1 reported that Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement she was "deeply disturbed by reports that ICE is using public property to carry out aggressive immigration enforcement operations."