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New York City tells park workers to document ICE staging, readies court fight
After agents were seen parking and meeting in city-owned lots at Van Cortlandt Park and Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Mayor Zohran Mamdani told DHS to pull them out or face legal action. DHS says the practice is lawful.
New York City has given its parks staff new instructions for dealing with federal immigration agents, as Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration warned the Department of Homeland Security on Monday that it is ready to sue if Immigration and Customs Enforcement keeps using city-owned lots as staging areas.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, acting ICE Director David Venturella and Kenneth Genalo, who runs ICE's New York field office, the mayor said agents had parked vehicles and held meetings in unstaffed lots at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx and along 111th Street on the western edge of Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. The Queens lots sit beside a city-run preschool and several cultural institutions popular with families. The city says it never authorized the use and asked DHS to issue guidance barring agents from staging operations there.
"Today, I'm telling DHS to order its agents off our lots. If they keep coming back, we will see them in court," Mamdani said. Corporation Counsel Steven Banks said the city was prepared to go to court, though the letter does not spell out what kind of legal action it would take.
What park workers are told to do
Under a Parks Department policy released the same day, employees approached by federal officers seeking entry to non-public areas must ask for identification and contact the agency's general counsel. Any warrant goes to department lawyers for review, and without a valid judicial warrant or other authorization, agents are not to be let into restricted areas. Staff are told not to confront officers physically or verbally, to call 911 if agents enter without permission and, when it is safe, to note the number of officers and vehicles involved in suspected staging. Breaking the rules can lead to suspension or dismissal.
The policy builds on Executive Order 13, which Mamdani signed in February. It bars non-city law enforcement from using city-owned lots as staging grounds without a judicial warrant or another legal exception.
From private garages to city land
The push started in the Bronx. After a federal agent shot 28-year-old Oscar Belgal during an enforcement operation in Marble Hill on Oct. 8, with his 5-year-old child in the car, local officials said agents had been staging from a private lot near the neighborhood's Target. DHS has said Belgal rammed agents' vehicles. In mid-October, Mamdani, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and more than 100 other elected officials asked private garage and lot owners not to rent or lend space to ICE, since the city's own access rules cover only property it owns.
Gov. Kathy Hochul said she was "deeply disturbed by reports that ICE is using public property." DHS rejected the city's argument. A department spokesperson 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 standoff follows an Oct. 15 ruling in which U.S. District Judge Ramón Reyes Jr. in Brooklyn dismissed the Trump administration's lawsuit against New York City's sanctuary laws, finding that Washington cannot force local governments to help enforce civil immigration law. The government can still appeal.
Photos: Kara McCurdy/NYC Mayoral Photography Office; Bronx Times
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