Mamdani and 100 officials ask NYC lot owners to lock ICE out

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and more than 100 New York elected officials – including U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and City Council Speaker Julie Menin – released a joint letter urging owners of parking lots and garages across the five boroughs to refuse to let Immigration and Customs Enforcement use their properties as staging grounds. The letter cites a Target lot in Marble Hill, two bank lots on Northern Boulevard in Queens and a Tribeca lot as recent examples, and notes that contracts for the Morton Street garage in Lower Manhattan and Hudson River Park Trust parking expired earlier this year. The push follows the October 8 shooting of Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old man wounded by ICE officers during an enforcement operation in Marble Hill. 'Each such use... gives ICE a launching point for operations that have terrified and terrorized local communities,' the signatories wrote. Gothamist carried the story on its homepage on October 17.