Boston's Democratic mayor is personally urging private parking garage owners to refuse business with federal immigration agents, and the Department of Homeland Security says she's resorting to intimidation because she knows she lacks the legal authority to stop them.
Mayor Michelle Wu sent an open letter to parking garage and lot owners across Boston asking them to reject any lease proposals from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The same day, her administration filed a Freedom of Information Act request with ICE demanding copies of every response the agency received to its recent parking procurement notice. DHS fired back publicly, calling Wu's campaign against private landlords "unhinged" and accusing her of threatening law-abiding citizens for cooperating with federal law enforcement.
The clash centers on a procurement notice ICE issued last month under the ID "DHS-ICE-SurgeParking." The notice sought 249 contiguous parking spaces in Boston on a five-year lease, part of a broader effort covering 14 cities nationwide, including Denver, Seattle, Philadelphia, Dallas, Phoenix, and Pittsburgh. ICE needs the spaces because Boston already banned the agency's vehicles from city-owned parking lots, cutting off one staging option for immigration enforcement operations. Wu and six other cities across Greater Boston signed executive orders prohibiting ICE from using any municipal property or parking lots for operations.
Wu's open letter spoke bluntly about her view of the federal government's attempt to rent out private parking spaces. Fox News Digital reviewed the letter, in which Wu told property owners that ICE's procurement of parking "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 also promised to keep garage owners informed as the city pursued its FOIA request. "We will keep you updated as we push for a response," Wu wrote, closing with: "Thank you again for your partnership."
The Boston City Council had already laid the groundwork earlier this month by adopting an emergency resolution calling on the city to "explore all avenues to oppose" the proposed ICE parking leases in downtown Boston and to "explore available options to prevent the proposed parking leases." Wu cited that resolution in her letter as evidence of unified city opposition.
The city's FOIA request specifically demanded "all submissions and/or responses to ICE Sources Sought Notice with Notice ID 'DHS-ICE-SurgeParking.'" In plain terms, Boston wants to know which private property owners responded to ICE's parking solicitation, information that would effectively identify any local business willing to work with federal immigration enforcement.
That detail is what drew DHS's sharpest criticism. The federal agency posted on X that Wu "knows she has NO authority to block us from using private property." DHS accused Wu of a different tactic entirely:
"She's hunting down private property owners and threatening them for working with ICE, because she'd rather intimidate law-abiding Bostonians than get criminal illegal aliens OFF the street."
DHS did not stop at one post. In a second message on X responding to the FOIA submission, the department escalated its rhetoric against the mayor.
"If private citizens want to allow [federal law enforcement] onto their own property, they should be allowed to do so, free of threats, intimidation and coercion from their radical left-wing mayor who shamelessly compared ICE agents to a neo-Nazi group."
The specific incident DHS referenced, when and where Wu allegedly compared ICE agents to a neo-Nazi group, was not detailed in the department's posts or in available reporting. But the accusation signals how far the federal-local standoff over immigration enforcement has deteriorated.
Wu has been one of the most vocal Democratic mayors opposing President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement agenda. She has not limited her resistance to symbolic gestures. The executive orders she signed with six neighboring cities carry operational weight: they bar ICE from staging on any municipal property, forcing the agency to seek private alternatives, the very alternatives Wu now wants to shut down through public pressure on landlords.
Fox News Digital reached out to Wu's office and the city of Boston for comment. No response was reported.
Boston's resistance is not happening in isolation. DHS has publicly named Wu alongside other Democratic officials it accuses of fueling hostility toward ICE officers. Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Just The News that "Democrat politicians like Hakeem Jeffries, Mayor Wu of Boston, Tim Walz, and Mayor Bass of Los Angeles are contributing to the surge in assaults of our ICE officers through their repeated vilification and demonization of ICE."
That statement came after over 1,000 rioters surrounded a federal law enforcement building in Los Angeles, assaulting ICE officers, slashing tires, and defacing property. The Los Angeles Police Department took two hours to respond to the assault on federal officers, a delay that deepened the rift between federal and local authorities.
Wu's opposition to federal immigration enforcement predates the parking dispute. She declared publicly that Boston would not cooperate with the Trump administration's deportation operations. "We are not cooperating with those efforts that actually threaten the safety of everyone by causing widespread fear," Wu told the New York Post.
Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, responded with a direct warning. "If you don't want to work with us, then get the h*** out all the way. We're going to do it," Homan said. "Rather than send 100 people to Boston, we're going to send 200 agents to Boston."
Boston operates under its Trust Act, updated in 2018, which allows police to cooperate with ICE on serious crimes like human trafficking and drug trafficking but limits their involvement in civil immigration enforcement. The AP reported that Wu was set to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee alongside the mayors of Chicago, New York, and Denver about sanctuary city policies.
Homan claimed at CPAC that at least nine accused "child rapists" in Boston jails were being withheld from ICE custody. ICE separately apprehended a Colombian illegal immigrant charged with child sex offenses after a local detainer request was ignored, the kind of case that undercuts the argument that sanctuary policies protect public safety rather than shield criminal suspects from federal custody.
Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden offered a different rationale for limiting cooperation. "We don't want people's fear of immigration consequences of a deportation to have a chilling effect on our ability to hold people accountable," Hayden said. That argument, that immigrants won't report crimes or cooperate with local prosecutors if they fear deportation, is the standard sanctuary-city justification. It does not explain why a mayor would try to identify and pressure private property owners who respond to a lawful federal procurement notice.
The city's FOIA request deserves a closer look. On its face, it is a routine transparency filing, a local government asking a federal agency for public records. But the practical effect is harder to dismiss. If Boston obtains the list of parking operators who responded to ICE's solicitation, those businesses would be exposed to the same kind of public pressure Wu is already applying through her open letter. A garage owner who quietly submitted a bid to lease spaces to ICE could find that bid publicized by a mayor who just asked every property owner in the city to "reject any proposition by ICE."
DHS read the FOIA the same way. The department said the request itself "admits she has no authority to block ICE from utilizing private property", meaning Wu's own legal team apparently recognized the city cannot legally prevent a private landlord from signing a lease with a federal agency. The FOIA filing, in DHS's reading, is the workaround: if you cannot ban the transaction, expose the participants.
Whether that exposure amounts to legitimate transparency or government-backed intimidation of private citizens is the core question. Wu frames it as protecting her city from a federal "attack." DHS frames it as a sanctuary-city mayor using her office to punish constituents who cooperate with lawful federal operations.
Neither side has filed a lawsuit yet, despite the original headline's reference to a court fight. Wu's letter references no specific legal action. DHS's posts assert Wu lacks authority but cite no pending case. The confrontation, for now, is political, fought through open letters, FOIA requests, emergency resolutions, and social media posts.
But the pattern is clear. When Boston banned ICE from city-owned lots, the agency sought private alternatives. When ICE posted a procurement notice for private parking, the city council passed an emergency resolution opposing it. When that resolution carried no legal force over private property, Wu wrote directly to property owners urging them to refuse. And when that still left the possibility of willing landlords, the city filed a FOIA request to find out who they are.
Each step escalates the pressure on private citizens caught between a federal agency with lawful procurement authority and a city government determined to deny that agency any foothold.
When a mayor cannot legally stop a private landlord from renting parking spaces to the federal government, and her answer is to find out who those landlords are and publicly ask everyone else to shun them, that is not transparency, it is a government official leveraging her office to make cooperation with lawful federal operations as costly as possible for ordinary citizens.
