Activists Are Pushing Cities and Companies to Cancel Parking Contracts With ICE

The Trump administration’s abduction and deportation machine is multifaceted. There are clear-cut components — agents, shackles, and jails — and less obvious, although no less essential, ones — cars and parking spaces.

In an effort to impede the attacks on immigrants, mayors of some of the country’s largest cities, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, have issued executive orders banning Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from using city-owned parking lots and properties.

But even in cities where mayors have banned ICE from using government-owned properties, ICE still has free reign to contract with private companies. After the federal agency posted a notice seeking “Surge Parking” in 14 cities, including Boston, Wu released a public letter to local parking garage and lot owners, warning them that if ICE were “to procure such resources, it would constitute an unprovoked and unwarranted escalation, creating potentially significant risks to public safety and halting economic activity across our entire region.”

“Today, I ask you to join us: Reject any proposition by ICE to facilitate an attack on the people of Boston,” she wrote. “In the face of escalating attacks on cities across the country, we have repeatedly seen that the strongest defense is solidarity.”

In the Boston suburb of Burlington, Massachusetts, Bearing Witness New England has been holding weekly protests outside ICE’s Boston Field Office, where people are held for days in inhumane conditions. Activists say ICE has been keeping its vehicles in a nearby parking lot owned by local developer National Development.

According to a report by NPR affiliate WBUR, the company sent a letter to local activists in February, stating that ICE vehicles were being “improperly parked” in its parking spaces, and that it had “reached an arrangement with ICE that they would no longer park their vehicles on our property.”

However, the company also said that the government agency, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), has rights to use the garage and the company does not have authority over how the FAA parcels out parking spaces to other federal agencies, according to WBUR’s report.

Nathan Phillips, a Boston University professor who organizes with the Burlington-area coalition Building Up Resilience Networks (B.U.R.N.), says ICE has continued to park in sections of lots National Development leases to the FAA that exceed what the lease allows.

Protests that target parking garages are “throwing sand in the gears” of ICE’s deportation and abduction machine, he says.

“So much of their operation depends on logistics of transport and travel,” Phillips told Truthout. “It’s human trafficking, and so if we can go after the trafficking, the means by which they’re doing this, that can have a really effective impact.”

Fellow B.U.R.N. activist Josh Model says National Development’s recent actions contradict its public image as a philanthropic company committed to improving communities.

“National Development Corporation, which, as a local developer, likes to promote that they’re cognizant of community needs and give to charity and all these nice things,” but they’re “letting ICE stage kidnappings” from their property, said Model.

While the government spending website, usaspending.gov, only lists 12 active contracts for parking spaces, as of September 28, the true number of parking lots that ICE uses is likely much higher, said Model. It’s difficult to untangle where ICE is parking, in part, because many of the contracts are not with ICE, but through another federal agency, the General Services Administration (GSA), he said. The GSA manages government buildings and real estate, and owns or leases space in more than 8,300 buildings, according to an explainer on the agency published by the Congressional Research Service.

In the case of National Development, ICE is using parking leased by the GSA for the FAA, according to Model.

Of the 12 contracts found on usaspending.gov, two were with the Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA). The PPA website states that, among other responsibilities, it coordinates “the efforts of public agencies concerning parking” and establishes and operates public parking facilities. Its operations are governed by a six-member state-appointed board appointed by the governor of Pennsylvania.

Earlier this year, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker signed a package of bills to protect city residents from ICE, including legislation that prohibits ICE from using city-owned properties as staging locations for raids and prohibits employees from granting ICE access to city-owned spaces without a judicial warrant. Over its history, the PPA has had a complicated relationship between state and city governance. It is currently controlled by a state-appointed board. The Parking Authority did not respond to a request for comment.

One contract with the PPA “provides Homeland Security Investigations with sixteen leased parking spaces in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.” It runs from Sept. 30, 2026 to Sept. 29, 2027, with a potential end date of Sept. 29, 2031. A separate contract ran from Sept. 30, 2025 to Sept. 29, 2026, and was for “the rental of indoor parking garage spaces required for government vehicles for ICE Homeland Security Investigations Philadelphia.”

“City Council’s ICE OUT package of legislation is one of the most comprehensive measures in the country that used every tool available within City Council’s authority to limit collaboration between ICE and City government, including protecting our data, protecting residents from intimidation and discrimination, and limiting the use of City owned spaces for staging,” Councilmember At-Large Rue Landau said in a statement to Truthout.

Landau and Minority Leader Kendra Brooks introduced the ICE OUT legislation.

“As ICE continues to instill fear and perpetrate violence against our neighbors and in our communities, I think PPA should take a hard look at this federal government contract and what their options are as the independent agency running those spaces to limit ICE’s use,” Rue said.

Protesters in New York have uncovered what they say are ICE vehicles parked in an Icon parking garage in downtown Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. Earlier this month, activists in New York protested outside the parking garage. Icon did not respond to emails requesting comment.

“The neighbors downtown don’t know that their neighborhoods, their communities, are being used as staging ground for ruthless assaults on our neighbors in more vulnerable neighborhoods,” said Julie DeLaurier, an activist with Rise and Resist. “People are walking around oblivious to the threat that these thugs present to our neighbors.”

Rise and Resist, along with Hands OFF NYC, are part of the NO PARKING FOR ICE coalition.

New York City Councilmember Christopher Marté, whose district includes Tribeca, was one of the approximately hundred people who attended a protest outside the Icon parking garage in September.

“What we’ve been seeing all throughout the city is a really drastic uptick of ICE abductions of our neighbors,” Marté told Truthout in a phone interview. “They use these parking lots as staging locations, and so I believe if we disrupt, evict them from these parking lots, then they would have no place to start their process of abducting our neighbors.”

Earlier this year, activists demanded that Hudson River Park Trust, which manages the Hudson River Park in Manhattan, cut its contract with ICE for parking spaces at Pier 40 at the park. After widespread outcry, the company did not renew its contract when it expired on June 30.

However, community members say they saw what appeared to be ICE vehicles park on the property in July, according to amNewYork. The news outlet reported that a company spokesperson said they would look into the situation and noted that the Trust has federal parking contracts with other agencies, including the GSA.

DeLaurier says New Yorkers will continue to fight to get ICE off their streets.

“New Yorkers protect New Yorkers from ICE,” said DeLaurier. “We will do whatever we can to protect our neighbors. One thing we can do is let ICE know that they will have no peace trying to park on our streets in downtown Manhattan to terrorize our neighbors.”