Hudson River Park aiming to shed its ICE parking spots

January 21, 2026 Community News, Parks

Hudson River Park Trust, which has had Pier 40 parking spaces leased to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for a couple decades, is aiming to end its lease with the federal agency when it comes up for renewal.

It’s clearly now become a liability for the park.

“At its creation, the Hudson River Park Trust inherited a 2,000-space public parking garage and Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been contracting for a small number of parking spaces since the early 2000s,” the Trust told its Advisory Council earlier today. “The contract is confined to the provision of parking spaces, and the Trust has no engagement related to enforcement. 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 or enter into a new contract.”

This was originally covered in 2018 by Sludge, the non-profit investigative journalism site that reports on money and politics, when it examined contracts with ICE in Sanctuary Cities. The publication then released a map last week showing the parking facilities that currently house ICE vehicles, along with every company in the country that does business with the agency. (Thanks to A. for the heads up.)

The five-year contract for “secure local parking spaces for government vehicles” ends this year. Over the course of five years, the agency paid between $150,000 and $169,000 per year, according to the reporting on USASpending.com.

 
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1 Comment

  1. jim
    March 3, 2026 • 2:36 pm

    Dear Tribeca Citizen, Providing ICE parking is clearly Hudson River Park Trust ‘engaging in enforcement’ with the goons who many citizens consider domestic terrorists.
    The Trust also allowed its Very Important Person Heliport in the park at W.30th St to be used on Jan 3 by those same goons to dump a kidnapped head of state on the park’s tarmac.

    Based on the Trust’s history of secret deals, we cannot believe HRPT will actually cancel the ICE contract.
    In the Board’s own words: “The Board does not entertain comments or questions from the Public”. ever.

    In 2007, a NY Supreme CT decision against the Trust mandated Wealth’s toxic heliport’s closure by 2014. (The main plaintiff was the former activist Friends of Hudson River Park!)

    The Trust ignored that deadline and sent Madelyn Wils to crush the settlement in Albany without the Advisory Council’s consent.

    It’s important to note the HRPT does not clearly state that it will not renew the ICE contract, only that it ‘does not intend to’. This is typical of the (very few) semi-public statements that HRPT deigns to share. Probably penned by Risa Heller’s PR firm that prides itself in ‘storytelling’.

    This current Pier 40 issue, the Maduro kidnapping, and 26 yrs of HRTP corruption beginning with the its first Chair Ortenzio should be the incentive for re-writing the Hudson River Park Act to form a truly Public park, not a Development Corporation run by the C-Suite of HRPF.

    Reply

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