BY COLE SINANIAN | cole@queensledger.com
EAST ELMHURST — A chorus of local elected officials led by Assemblymember Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas are calling on owners of the Bulova Corporate Center to stop harboring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which they say has been using the business complex’s large parking lot to store vehicles and prepare for raids.
Located on Astoria Blvd. in East Elmhurst, the Bulova Corporate Center houses private and government office space, including the EPA and administrative offices for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which operates at the nearby LaGuardia Airport. After reports of unmarked federal vehicles and ICE agents staging in the parking lot emerged on social media last month, nearly every elected official representing the area — one of the most diverse in New York City — signed onto a letter urging building owner Blumenfeld Development Group to stop ICE from using the site.
“When federal immigration agents stage their vehicles in a highly visible location like the Bulova parking lot, it sends a message to immigrant New Yorkers that they are being watched and that they can not feel safe in their own community,” read the letter, addressed to Blumenfeld Development Group President Edward Blumenfeld and dated September 1.
“We urge Bluemfeld Development Corp to stand with the communities that surround and support this property and to consider ensuring that its parking facilities are not used as a staging ground for ICE enforcement,” it continued.
Besides Gonzalez-Rojas, the letter’s signatories include City councilmembers Tiffany Cabán, Julie Won, and Shekar Krishna, Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Grace Meng, as well as fellow Assemblymember Catalina Cruz and Assemblymember-elect Brian Romero. It comes amid a recent surge in Queens ICE arrests as NYC faces the Trump Administration’s so-called “Operation Rotten Apple,” with more than 2,000 arrests reported throughout Queens since the start of Trump’s second term.
Neighborhoods surrounding Bulova like Corona, Jackson Heights, College Point, Elmhurst, and East Elmhurst have been identified as major hotspots of recent ICE enforcement. In East Elmhurst, the stretch of Northern Boulevard between Grand Central Parkway and Roosevelt Avenue has seen the most ICE activity, according to sources from Hands Off NYC — a citywide coalition that tracks ICE activity.
Blumenfeld and Bulova Corporate Center management have maintained that while several federal agencies use the campus, ICE does not have offices there— though they have not confirmed whether ICE uses the parking lot to stage.
“For over a decade there have been federal agencies located at the Bulova Corporate Center,” wrote a Bulova spokesperson in a statement to the Queens Ledger. “While none of our tenants have any obligation to discuss with the building owner who visits, their respective responsibilities or their business models, ICE does not have an office at the Bulova Corporate Center.
Local politicians, however, were unsatisfied.
“Bulova’s response was wholly inadequate, simply stating that ICE does not have an office in the building and that there was nothing management could do,” wrote Gonzalez-Rojas in a statement posted to social media. “That’s not good enough.”
In a widely circulated Instagram video posted in early August, former US Foreign Service worker and progressive Congressional candidate Chuck Park, walked through the parking lot pointing out the identifying features of ICE vs other kinds of federal vehicles.
Speaking to the Queens Ledger a few days later, Park explained that while many of the federal vehicles parked at Bulova appear to belong to TSA, he identified several that stuck out as suspicious.
“It would be extremely coincidental if ICE activity was ramping up in exactly that vicinity, and there just happened to be unmarked federal vehicles there at the same time,” Park said.
