Mamdani Threatens to Sue ICE Over Parking Lots. Parks Workers Are His ‘First Line of Defense’

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani threatened Monday to take the Trump administration to court because federal immigration agents have been parking in city lots.

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 “reportedly parked their vehicles and conducted meetings” in unstaffed city-owned lots at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx and along 111th Street beside Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. “If your agents continue any unauthorized use of these lots,” he wrote, “New York City will take legal action to prevent this unlawful commandeering of City property.”

The Department of Homeland Security didn’t blink. “ICE’s presence in public parking lots is fully authorized under federal law and is a standard practice for law enforcement agencies nationwide,” a spokesperson told amNewYork. “Our message remains: ICE is NOT slowing down.” The spokesperson added that Mamdani “should be grateful to our brave law enforcement officers for cleaning up the streets of NYC since he won’t.”

That is the whole fight. The biggest city in America isn’t accusing federal agents of barging into a school or a shelter. It is accusing them of pulling into a parking lot.

Parks workers get a new job

The letter came with a new NYC Parks policy for frontline workers, and that’s where it gets real. Under the rules, as amNewYork laid them out, workers who see federal agents in public areas are told to notify supervisors and agency lawyers, and to document suspected staging when it’s safe, down to the number of officers and vehicles. Agents who want into nonpublic areas must show identification, any warrant goes to agency attorneys, and without a valid judicial warrant they stay out. If they come in anyway, workers call 911.

Workers are told not to confront officers physically or verbally. But they can be suspended or fired for not following the policy.

Asked whether that puts too much on Parks employees, Mamdani didn’t hedge. He called them “the first line of defense for New Yorkers across the five boroughs, especially immigrant New Yorkers.”

Think about what that means. The person who empties the trash cans by the soccer fields now doubles as an ICE spotter, and the job description comes with a disciplinary threat.

Corporation Counsel Steven Banks, the city’s top lawyer, backed the threat: “Now that the Department of Homeland Security is clearly on notice regarding its unauthorized use of city lots, there is no excuse for continuing to commandeer city property and we are prepared to go to court if it does not stop.”

The rule is the mayor’s, not the city’s law

The parking ban doesn’t come from a law the City Council passed. It comes from Section 3 of Mamdani’s own Executive Order 13, signed Feb. 6. It says non-city law enforcement “are not permitted to use City lots” as “staging areas, processing locations, or operations bases” unless they have a formal agreement, a judicial warrant or a formal cooperative arrangement with the city.

The order itself describes the actual city law, Administrative Code section 4-210, as barring outside law enforcement from “non-public areas of City property, including shelters and schools.” These are unstaffed lots that the mayor’s letter says exist for “New Yorkers and visitors who wish to use our parks.” In other words, public.

Then there’s the word “commandeering.” In constitutional law, the anti-commandeering rule the Supreme Court laid down in Printz v. United States (1997) stops Washington from drafting state and local officers into carrying out federal programs. It protects cities from the federal government. It was built to shield cities from Washington, not to let a city order federal officers off public pavement.

The doctrine that runs the other way is intergovernmental immunity. In United States v. Washington (2022), a unanimous Supreme Court struck down a state law because it singled out the federal government and its contractors for rules no one else faced. A lot that’s open to every park visitor except federal agents invites the same question.

What the mayor’s case leaves out

Start with the evidence. The letter says agents “reportedly” used the lots. Documented, a New York immigration news site, reported that federal agents were seen at Flushing Meadows Corona Park at least five times since Aug. 21, according to Hands Off NYC, an ICE-watch group. That group’s co-director, Hae-Lin Choi, is quoted in the mayor’s own announcement vowing to “fight back until ICE is abolished.”

Then the backstory. City Hall tied the push to the Oct. 8 shooting in Marble Hill, saying agents “recklessly shot Oscar Belgal” while his 5-year-old son sat in the car. DHS gave a very different account. It said Belgal is a criminal illegal alien from the Dominican Republic with a fourth-degree grand larceny conviction and earlier arrests for first-degree robbery, assault and selling narcotics, and that he has associations with the Trinitarios gang. DHS said he refused orders to get out of his car, smashed into two government vehicles and then “accelerated toward other officers.”

DHS also said nearly 15,000 ICE detainers had gone unhonored under New York’s sanctuary policies. “They’re not picking and choosing which laws to enforce, like these sanctuary politicians,” Mullin said at the time. “I’ll never apologize for our men and women doing their job.”

What’s next

The letter sets no deadline and names no court. It follows Mamdani’s Oct. 16 letter, signed by more than 100 elected officials including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, asking private garage and lot owners to turn ICE away.

Mamdani told reporters he has talked with President Trump about ICE directly. “That is one of the clearest examples of a stark policy difference between the two of us,” he said, “and that conversation will continue.”

ICE says it isn’t slowing down. New York says it will see the agents in court. The fight is over a parking space.