After last week’s shooting of Oscar Belgal in Marble Hill, Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) demanded that Target stop “offering” its Bronx properties as staging sites for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The company, however, says it has no cooperative agreements with ICE or any other immigration-enforcement agency. Obviously, reports that agents simply used a parking lot, as is their legal right, do not establish that Target invited, authorized, or even knew about the agents doing so.
On October 16, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and more than 100 other officials followed AOC’s lead in a letter urging private parking lot and garage owners across the city to deny ICE the use of their facilities for enforcement staging. Their letter asks owners to inform ICE agents that they are not authorized to use their properties, which is potentially an illegal and obstructive request to law enforcement.
The letter goes further in demanding compliance and asks the recipients to demonstrate that they will actively keep agents away from their premises, while acknowledging that ICE’s use of parking facilities may involve a formal agreement, an informal arrangement, or “no arrangement at all.” In other words, a business need not have invited federal agents or agreed to support their work to become responsible, under this new political standard, for stopping ICE agents from using their property.
While the original accusation against Target demanded evidence of cooperation (for which there is none), the expanded campaign demands action regardless of whether cooperation occurred. That is a significant shift, and before this trend spreads beyond New York, Democrat lawmakers need to wake up and realize whose shoulders this new burden of theirs is falling upon.
A garage operator has customers to serve, and a retailer has employees to supervise, deliveries to receive, and a business to run. Now, political leaders want these employers and young employees to manage the fallout from a confrontation between federal and local immigration policies.
The consequences will not be an exchange of letters between elected officials and corporate executives. The consequences are someone working at a garage or store being forced to jump into action when agents arrive, explain company policy, and summon help if a dispute develops.
If ICE agents refuse to comply with being asked to vacate private spaces intended for public use, such as parking lots, when doing so falls within the established legal rights of law enforcement, and the business owner or employee refuses to budge on asking them to leave, then it’s easy to see how some of these interactions masterminded by Democrat lawmakers will not go well.
For a young employee learning to manage a shift, this could become a responsibility with untold consequences. Imagine a 17-year-old kid working in the parking garage at Bronx Terminal Market, going and finding shopping carts and returning them to their proper location. Now imagine that kid having to go up to idling cars with people in them, since ICE agents sometimes operate in plain clothes and unmarked cars, knock on windows, ask if they are ICE agents, and then demand that they leave if they say yes. Why would Democrat lawmakers want to put that burden on that young person?
Elected officials are supposed to spend their time alleviating burdens on the public and making things easier and simpler, not issuing demands for citizens to obstruct law enforcement. Immigration policy is the responsibility of government. Elected officials have the authority, staff, and public mandate to challenge enforcement practices, seek records, and pursue changes in law. They should use those tools and accept responsibility for the results rather than deputizing the public to be immigration and customs enforcement watchdogs.
While the Marble Hill shooting warrants investigation, as do all arrests during which a law enforcement officer discharges a firearm, lawmakers who have chosen to drag private companies and their employees into this political fight have gone too far.
AOC and her colleagues have moved from inaccurately accusing one company of cooperation to asking businesses across New York to prevent staging activity for federal officers. Conservative lawmakers in Washington must call this behavior for what it is: asinine, counterproductive, and dangerous.
Ken Blackwell is the former Mayor of Cincinnati, Treasurer of Ohio and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. He is currently an adviser to the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C.