Mayor Zohran Mamdani has threatened to take legal action against Immigration and Customs Enforcement over allegations the agency’s officers at the agency are using parking lots owned by New York City for operations in the area.

In a letter to the Trump administration, Mamdani noted the agency’s use of property owned by the city was “unauthorized and is therefore illegal, endangers City residents, and sows fear among those who seek to access City property”.

He added, “if your agents continue any unauthorized use of these lots, New York City will take legal action to prevent this unlawful commandeering of City property.”

The letter called on the Department of Homeland Security and other ICE officials to issue guidance immediately to ICE agents that stipulate they are prohibited from using any New York City parking lots to stage or conduct operations.

New York City has been a sanctuary city for immigrants since Mayor Ed Koch’s administration in 1989.

The Mamdani administration has criticized the Trump administration over ICE activity in New York City, calling for ICE to be abolished in the wake of a shooting by an ICE officer of Oscar Belgal, 28, while he was picking up his five-year-old child from school.

Lawyers for Belgal claimed the ICE agent did not identify himself while wearing plainclothes before he ran up to Belgal’s car, smashed in the windows, then fired several shots into the vehicle.

The Trump administration recently lost a legal challenge of New York City’s sanctuary laws filed in July 2025.

The Mamdani administration and more than 100 elected officials in New York have also urged private owners and operators of parking garages to prohibit ICE from using their private property for operations in the city.

“Our neighbors should not live in fear that the parking lot down the block could become a staging ground for an operation that puts their communities at risk,” Mamdani wrote in a 15 October letter to more than a thousand parking garage owners and operators in New York City. “I am asking every garage and lot owner in this city to stop giving them that option. Do not rent your property to ICE. Do not lend it to them. Tell them they are not welcome.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told the New York Times in response to the letter: “ICE’s presence in public parking lots is fully authorized under federal law and is a standard practice for law enforcement agencies nationwide.

“Mayor Mamdani should be grateful to our brave law enforcement officers for cleaning up the streets of NYC since he won’t.”