Mamdani asks NYC parking garage owners to keep ICE off their lots

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and more than 100 elected officials, including Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, urged private parking lot and garage owners not to let ICE use their properties as staging areas after an immigration officer shot a man in Marble Hill.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani led a letter signed by more than 100 elected officials urging owners of private parking lots and garages across the five boroughs not to let U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement use their properties as staging areas. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries were among the signers of the letter, sent Friday, Oct. 16.

The letter asks owners not to “rent, lend or otherwise make their properties available” to ICE and to tell the agency directly that it is not permitted to use their facilities. Operators who want to discuss the request were directed to the city’s Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, Faiza Ali.

After the Marble Hill shooting

ICE officers during an operation in New York (file photo)

The appeal follows the Oct. 8 shooting of 28-year-old Oscar Belgal by a federal immigration officer in Marble Hill, with his 5-year-old son in the car. Belgal survived and was hospitalized, and the child was not hurt. According to the mayor’s office, ICE agents had been using a privately owned parking lot a few blocks away as a staging area.

Accounts of the shooting differ. The Department of Homeland Security said Belgal rammed ICE vehicles as officers tried to box in his car and arrest him. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said plainclothes federal officers approached with a gun drawn as he was pulling into a parking space, and at least one officer fired seven rounds after he began to pull forward.

“Staging grounds” across the city

“ICE is using private parking facilities across the City as staging grounds for its operations,” the letter says, warning owners that this “risks placing your property, your employees, and your customers at the center of that.” It cites lots in Marble Hill, two bank parking lots on Northern Boulevard in Queens and a garage on Morton Street in Manhattan, whose operator removed ICE vehicles after neighbors raised concerns.

City law restricts the use of city-owned property for federal civil immigration enforcement, but those limits do not apply to privately owned garages and lots, so the request is voluntary. The letter notes that immigrants make up more than a third of the city’s population and 43% of its workforce.

DHS, which oversees ICE, has said its officers did not use the Target parking lot near the scene as a staging ground on the day of the shooting, and that they are legally authorized to use such sites.

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Mamdani asks NYC parking garage owners to keep ICE off their lots