New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and roughly 100 Democratic officials are pressing parking garage owners to bar ICE agents, a move federal officials say will not halt deportations.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani and about 100 Democratic officials have sent a joint letter telling parking lot and garage owners to refuse space to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal officers.
The demand aims to make it harder for federal agents to stage vehicles in New York City. Signers include Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, City Council Speaker Julie Menin, and most of the City Council.
Breitbart reported the letter’s core instruction to private operators.
"Make it known to ICE that it is not authorized to use your garages and lots,"
That line puts private businesses in the middle of a fight over federal immigration enforcement in a sanctuary jurisdiction.
The appeal followed a confrontation tied to an ICE arrest attempt. Officials cited the shooting involving Oscar Belgal, a Dominican national.
During the attempted arrest, Belgal tried to use his vehicle to run down ICE agents, according to the account. He was slightly wounded.
City and state Democrats answered that episode by targeting the parking ICE needs to operate, not by backing the agents who faced the vehicle.
This was not a lone mayoral memo. Schumer and Gillibrand put their names on it. So did Jeffries.
Menin and most of the New York City Council joined them, along with dozens of other state and local Democratic officials. Roughly 100 Democrats in total backed the call.
The addressees were private parking lot and garage owners. The request told them ICE and other federal officers are not welcome and not authorized to use those facilities.
The Department of Homeland Security rejected the pressure campaign. A DHS spokesperson said federal immigration work in New York would continue.
"Mayor Mamdani should be grateful to our brave law enforcement officers for cleaning up the streets of NYC since he won’t,"
The same spokesperson drew a hard line on the parking tactic.
"Luckily, no terminated parking will stop ICE from deporting criminal illegal aliens to make New York safe again."
In plain terms, DHS is telling City Hall that cutting off overnight slots will not end removals of illegal immigrants with criminal records.
New York is not the first city to test this approach. In August, Democrats in Boston moved to ban ICE from renting or buying space to park vehicles.
That push came even though Boston has no ICE facility in the city. The pattern is clear: limit where agents can put cars, and hope the enforcement footprint shrinks.
Mamdani’s letter follows the same logic in America’s largest city, with two U.S. senators and the House minority leader on the signature page.
Parking operators did not write immigration law. They now face a public demand from the mayor and a long list of Democratic officeholders to treat federal officers as unwelcome customers.
No full public roster of every signer, no letter date, and no tally of which garages have agreed or refused appear in the available account. What is clear is the ask: shut the gate on ICE.
Federal officials have already answered. They say the removals continue either way.
When local leaders answer an agent-endangering arrest by squeezing parking instead of backing enforcement, they show whose side they take, and taxpayers can judge the results.
