Target Says Its Not Working With ICE Amid Uproar Over Parking Lot Use
Target said it was not working with federal immigration authorities as it faced criticism over the use of a store parking lot in New York as a staging area for agents after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and wounded a man on Thursday.The store, inside the Shops at Marble Hill, a mall on West 225th Street, is just down the street from where the shooting occurred.The mall also contains Marshalls, CVS, Starbucks and Foot Locker.
Marble Hill is a neighborhood near the northern tip of Manhattan and is often considered part of the Bronx.“Target has no cooperative agreements with ICE or any other immigration enforcement agency,” a company spokesman said in a statement on Friday.After the shooting, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, demanded that Target prohibit immigration officials from using its spaces, and protesters have gathered in the Marble Hill neighborhood to call for ICE to leave the city.“The Target Corporation must stop offering their Bronx properties as private staging sites for ICE, in compliance with requests from New York officials,” Ms.Ocasio-Cortez said.
“Target opening up large, active retail parking lots for paramilitary activity is unacceptable and places the entire community at risk.”It’s unclear, what authority, if any, Target has to decide on who uses the parking lot, which are largely considered accessible areas to everyone.This week, before the shooting, city officials sent a letter to Kingsbridge Associates, the developer of the plaza that Target occupies, asking that it terminate any agreements with ICE to use the private parking lot.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
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