Thirteen State and Local Electeds Call on Hudson River Park to End ICE Parking Now

Parking is going to get a whole lot tougher for ICE agents in New York City.

The Hudson River Park Trust said it won’t renew its parking contract with ICE that allow its vans to be parked in the Pier 40 garage when the current agreement expires at the end of June.

An uproad erupted after the digital news site Hell Gate first reported on ICE’s contract after it dug info after the digital site Sludge published a map that showed ICE contracts across the United States. The map included nearly a dozen firms right here in Manhattan that had lucrative deals with ICE, although only the Hudson River Park Trust was a public entity.

Borough president Brad Hoylman-Sigal said renting the parking spaces to ICE violates New York City’s status as a sanctuary city and has called for the contract to be ended immediately. And thirteen city and state elected officials soon followed, sending a letter to Hudson River Park Trust executive director Noreen Doyle urging her “to make every effort to terminate this contract immediately.”

“We appreciate the Trust’s public acknowledgment that the current contract will expire in June and that it does not intend to renew or enter into future agreements with ICE,” said the signers in the letter to Doyle. “At the same time,we urge the Trust to make every effort to terminate this contract immediately. Even with an expiration date in place, every day matters when considering the impact this relationship has on New Yorkers and on immigrant communities across the city.”

The letter was signed by: Brad Hoylman-Sigal, both Manhattan congress members, Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman; city council members Chris Marte, Erik Bottcher, Gale Brewer and Harvey Epstein; Assembly members Grace Lee, Deborah Glick, Tony Simone, Linda Rosenthal and Chris Fall; and New York State Senator Brian Kavanagh.

“We believe that ending the ICE parking contract as soon as possible would reinforce the Trust’s commitment to those values and help restore public confidence that the park’s facilities are being used in a manner consistent with the interests of all New Yorkers .Again, we urge the Trust to review the contract expeditiously and make every effort to terminate it prior to its scheduled expiration.”

Parking contracts between ICE and the Hudson River Park Trust apparently go back decades and never drew much scrutiny. Hell Gate reported that the not for profit enterprise currenntly has a contract valued at nearly $169,036 to allow vans believed to be used by ICE to park in its public garage on the far west side. After the story broke, the Hudson River Park Trust said the contract was not going to be renewed when it expires at the end of June.

“The Trust is currently in the last year of a five-year parking contract that commenced during the previous federal administration and does not intend to renew the contract,” Shal Ramaswamy, a spokesperson for the Hudson River Park Trust, told Hell Gate. She declined to say how many parking spots ICE was currently using but said the trust was not involved in any enforcement activities. “The contract is confined to the provision of parking spaces, and the Trust has no engagement related to enforcement,” she said. The white vans with tinted windows are reportedly use to transport detained migrants.

Newly elected Manhattan borough president Brad Hoylman-Sigal was one of the first to post that ending the contract in June is not soon enough: according to a post on X.

“The city and state who control the Hudson River Park Trust is providing space for ICE dozens of vehicles to park at Pier 40. This is publicly owned space that should be subject to New York City’s sanctuary policies which prevent cooperation with ICE,” Hoylman-Sigal wrote.

In 2018, Sludge reported that ICE’s contract at the time was worth $426,000 and involved 35 parking spaces for vehicles. A City Council bill at the time would have banned public entities from contracting with ICE, but the legislation never moved forward, according to a report in the not for profit news site THE CITY. Another bill in 2022 that would have banned public entities from contracting with ICE stalled in committee.

Even before the latest killing of ICU nurse Alex Petri by ICE agents on Jan. 24, anger towards ICE has been building after 3,000 agents were reportedly dispatched to Minneapolis, a city which counts a police force of only 600 officer. Renee Good was shot and killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, sparking tense demonstrations in subsequent days across the city and across the country.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem held a press conference in NYC on Jan. 8 to herald her department’s ongoing immigration operations in New York City.

That drew an angry retort from migrant advocates in the city. ”Secretary Noem lied about events in Minneapolis and she lied about the efficacy of New York’s sanctuary policies,” said Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently said on ABC’s The View he was in favor of abolishing ICE. “I am in support of abolishing ICE, and I’ll tell you why: Because what we see is an entity that has no interest in fulfilling its stated reason to exist,” said Mamdani.

After the shooting death by an ICE agent of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who worked in the Minneapolis Veteran’s Center, on Saturday Jan. 24, he was once again branded a “domestic terrorist,” by the Trump Administration. Numerous videos were released on social media that contradicted the version the Trump administration was trying to push. The videos showed that Pretti was being held down by at least a half dozen agents of the Border Patrol and ICE after he tried to protect two women protestors who had been shoved to the ground by ICE.

Pretti had a license to carry a concealed weapon and while he was subdued on the ground, one agent discovered the weapon in his waistband and removed it. But moments later, five shots rang out hitting Petri several times in the back. Five more shots were fired by an agent as he backed away from Pretti who was now motionless on the ground.

Despite the bitter cold, a spontaneous demonstration of hundreds of demonstrators appeared at Union Square Park and marched to Madison Square Park on Jan. 24 calling for ICE to leave Minneapolis.