The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is calling on the federal government to remove Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles parked in a downtown, city-owned parking garage.
The request comes after Mission Local first reported Friday that ICE vehicles were assigned spaces in the Golden Gateway Garage, a few blocks from ICE’s downtown field office.
“I learned for the first time on Friday, October 30 that GSA is providing dedicated parking spaces for ICE vehicles at the facility,” wrote SFMTA’s director of transportation, Julie Kirschbaum, in a letter Monday to the federal government’s General Services Administration.
“I did not approve this arrangement, nor would I, because it is inconsistent with the City’s laws and policies.”
Kirschbaum requested that the federal agency “immediately and permanently cease parking ICE vehicles” at the Golden Gateway Garage, which is owned by the SFMTA.
State and local sanctuary laws prohibit municipal governments from collaborating with federal immigration agencies. Among those laws is San Francisco’s “ICE-Free Zones” legislation, which explicitly bars ICE from using city-owned property to stage operations.
Kirschbaum wrote that she “intends to pursue available options to bring the use of Golden Gateway Garage for ICE vehicles to an end.”
The city contracted a private firm, IMCO Parking, to operate the garage. IMCO then subcontracted to the General Services Administration, which handles logistics for other federal agencies and in turn assigned parking spaces to ICE.
The SFMTA was aware that its parking operator, IMCO Parking, had a sub-contract with the federal government. But it is unclear who, if anybody, at the SFMTA knew that ICE vehicles were parked there under the sub-contract.
Activists monitoring immigration enforcement vehicles in and around the federal building in downtown San Francisco said they have observed ICE vehicles exit and enter the Golden Gateway Garage for at least a year, and have occasionally seen officers standing around and loading bags into their vehicles.
The parking garage is just blocks from 630 Sansome St., the immigration field office that was last year the epicenter of arrests in San Francisco. Pitched battles between protesters and ICE agents took place in the streets around the building, some of them involving ICE vehicles.
In one, a woman was thrown from the hood of an ICE SUV that barrelled through a crowd.
Angela Chan, who helped draft both local and state sanctuary policies, called the letter a first step but “far from enough.”
She said that SFMTA should also investigate how this agreement came about, and cancel the contract.
Across the country, New York City is confronting a similar situation. Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday threatened to sue ICE for using city-owned parking lots to stage operations there.
Here in San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office has stayed quiet. Under city code, the city attorney can sue to enforce sanctuary laws. So far, the city attorney’s office has declined to comment, citing attorney-client privilege. The mayor’s office referred Mission Local’s questions to the SFMTA.
Supervisor Bilal Mahmood said he will introduce a letter of inquiry at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting asking the SFMTA and the Recreation and Park Department for lists of their contractors and subcontractors to see whether there are other possible violations around the city.
The letter will also look at how city departments are trained to approve contracts to ensure they comply with the city’s sanctuary policies.
“Our belief is this shouldn’t have happened to begin with,” Mahmood said.