Mamdani's ICE lot threat puts sanctuary over federal law

By The Conservative Desk (/journals/conservative-desk)

Oscar Belgal was 28 when ICE agents shot him in Marble Hill. His 5-year-old son was in the car. Federal agents had reportedly staged from a private lot nearby.

That shooting, and the staging that preceded it, sits behind the latest confrontation between New York City Hall and federal immigration authorities. On Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, Mayor Zohran Mamdani sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, acting ICE Director David Venturella, and ICE New York Field Office Director Kenneth Genalo. He demanded that agents stop using city-owned parking lots to stage enforcement operations and warned that the city would sue if the practice continued.

The letter cites reports that, since July, ICE agents parked vehicles and held meetings at a city lot at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx and along 111th Street near Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. The Queens lot sits next to a city-run preschool and the New York Hall of Science. The city says it never authorized the activity.

Mamdani framed the fight as enforcement of sanctuary policy. "We want to make very clear that we mean what we say when we talk about sanctuary city policies and we talk about the fact that our city will not assist in immigration enforcement," he told reporters Monday. "What we've seen all too often is ICE's flouting of those directives and those laws. And this is a letter to make clear that ICE has no right to use any city property or lots for anti-immigrant operations and that we are willing to go to court if they continue to do so."

In a separate statement he went further: "ICE has no right to use our property as a base for tearing families apart. That applies to every park and lot this City owns. This unauthorized use of City property must end now. Today, I'm telling DHS to order its agents off our lots. If they keep coming back, we will see them in court."

The same day, the Parks Department issued new instructions. Workers are to deny ICE entry to nonpublic lots and areas without a judicial warrant, check identification, contact general counsel, forward any warrant to agency attorneys, and call 911 if agents enter without authorization. They are told not to physically or verbally confront agents. The policy builds on an executive order Mamdani signed in February barring non-city law enforcement from using city-owned parking lots as staging grounds without a judicial warrant or qualifying exception. District Council 37, which represents many Parks workers, backed the training approach through executive director Henry Garrido.

Mid-October, after the Belgal shooting, Mamdani and more than 100 elected officials, including Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, had already urged private lot owners to deny ICE access. Monday's letter escalates that campaign from private property to municipal ground and from persuasion to threatened litigation.

The Department of Homeland Security answered directly. A DHS spokesperson said ICE's presence in public parking lots is fully authorized under federal law and is standard practice for law enforcement nationwide. "Mayor Mamdani should be grateful to our brave law enforcement officers for cleaning up the streets of NYC since he won't. Luckily, no terminated parking will stop ICE from deporting criminal illegal aliens to make New York safe again. We need New York to cooperate with our officers and stop releasing criminals from their jails into New York's neighborhoods. Seven of the 10 safest cities in America cooperate with ICE."

That is the core collision. Immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility under the Constitution. Cities do not get to write their own border policy by padlocking parking lots. When a mayor treats ICE staging on public asphalt as "illegal commandeering," he is not defending property management. He is attempting to raise the cost of federal operations inside a jurisdiction that already limits cooperation with immigration detainers and jail releases. The sanctuary framework Mamdani invokes is a local choice. It is not a grant of authority to nullify federal agents' lawful use of open public space.

Gov. Kathy Hochul stated the opposing case in her own words. "No family in New York should fear that going to the park or walking through their neighborhood could mean being torn away from their loved ones. I am deeply disturbed by reports that ICE is using public property to carry out aggressive immigration enforcement operations ... I stand with Mayor Mamdani in demanding an end to the unauthorized use of city property for these operations." Public Advocate Jumaane Williams added: "When we say ICE out of New York, we mean it -- and we're not going to let this rogue agency use city property to terrorize our city's residents." Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, said: "I hope that [ICE] do heed this warning, but I think the city will end up having to take legal action against them."

Those arguments cast enforcement itself as the harm and city property rules as the shield. They do not answer the public-safety ledger DHS put on the table. Criminal illegal aliens released into New York neighborhoods are not an abstraction. Federal officers removing them are performing a core sovereign function. Seven of the ten safest cities in America, DHS notes, cooperate with ICE. New York under this mayor is choosing the opposite posture and now seeks to litigate parking access to make that posture stick.

Queens City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, a Republican, rejected the premise that the city can dictate terms. "And the feds, of course, are going to completely ignore him, as they should. New York is not an independent nation that operates on its own immigration policies. Okay? Last I checked, we were still part of the United States of America."

Limited government cuts both ways here. It restrains federal overreach. It also restrains local officials who try to wall off their territory from national law. Taxpayers fund those city lots. They also fund the federal agents now told they may be sued for parking on them while pursuing removals. Faith and family rhetoric that treats every enforcement stop as an assault on households leaves no room for the families who live with the consequences of repeated releases and unenforced removals. Free enterprise is not advanced when city hall organizes pressure campaigns against private lot owners and then turns the same theory on municipal asphalt.

Corporation Counsel Steven Banks said that once DHS is on notice, continued unauthorized use of city lots would leave the city prepared to go to court. The Parks rules already put front-line workers in the middle: identify agents, call lawyers, dial 911, document, and avoid confrontation. That is not a quiet facilities memo. It is an operational obstacle course aimed at a federal agency DHS insists is acting lawfully.

Mamdani's letter does not claim ICE lacks authority to enforce immigration law inside New York. It claims the city can deny the ground on which agents prepare to do so. If courts accept that theory, every sanctuary jurisdiction gains a new lever: turn public lots, garages, and staging spots into litigated no-go zones and force federal officers onto narrower ground. If courts reject it, the episode still signals to agents, illegal aliens, and ordinary residents where City Hall's loyalties sit when federal law and local politics diverge.

The lots at Van Cortlandt Park and on 111th Street remain city property. ICE, DHS says, is not slowing down.