Chaos erupted in Lower Manhattan Tuesday afternoon as dozens of masked federal agents targeting street vendors on Canal Street were met with droves of spontaneous counter- protesters.
It’s unclear how many people the federal agents ultimately detained, though video and eyewitness accounts suggested as many as four — and likely far more.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request from THE CITY for comment.
As the operation carried on, agents were confronted with a spontaneous and growing crowd of counter-demonstrators, who heckled them to leave New York City and called them Nazis.
“Why do they be having their face covered?” one passerby shouted at the agents.
“Cause they know they’re not fucking welcome here,” another responded.
Cornered and outnumbered, the masked agents pushed and shoved demonstrators out of the way so vehicles could clear the area, while one whipped out a Taser and pointed it at protesters.
A crowd of protesters followed agents who left the area, moving south on Lafayette Street towards 26 Federal Plaza, where federal law enforcement has offices and a holding area where immigrants arrested are frequently detained.
As they did, more federal agents joined them, along with an armored vehicle and agents with assault rifles, a striking scene in a busy area of lower Manhattan of a kind that has become common in other cities during Trump’s immigration crackdown but one that had yet to hit New York City before Tuesday.
“The amount of weapons that they had on the street pointed at bystanders, something I’ve never seen in my life,” said local City Council member Christopher Marte, who heard about the agents on Canal Street and followed them with protesters to 26 Federal Plaza. “I haven’t seen this much military action in lower Manhattan since the days after 9/11,” he added.
The raid on Canal Street Tuesday took place two days after right-wing influencer Savanah Hernandez had posted a video of herself on Canal Street saying, “20-30 illegals in the area conducting business” and tagging ICE to “go check this corner out.”
Homeland security brought in an armored vehicle to Canal Street while people protested immigration arrests, Oct. 21, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
It also followed a sustained, year-long campaign by city law enforcement to crack down on unlicensed vendors in the area — many of them new migrants from West Africa selling electronics and unlicensed knock-offs of designer handbags. That included a week-long operation in March that led to the confiscation of what the NYPD claimed to be $23 million worth of goods “that blocked up city sidewalks.”
Deputy mayor of public safety Kaz Daughtry — who as the police department’s Deputy Commissioner of Operations last year flaunted the department’s efforts to address “the ongoing issue of unlicensed vendors littering the area with bootleg merchandise” — posted a video three weeks ago noting a joint operation between the NYPD, the Department of Sanitation, the Sheriff’s Office and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. Daughtry said the mission was to continue to be on Canal Street “every single day doing this operation.”
A number of vendors on Canal Street had been arrested and fingerprinted in the course of that year-long effort, said Mohamed Attia, managing director of the nonprofit advocacy group Street Vendor Project — opening a pathway for federal immigration authorities to step in without cooperation from local law enforcement once the arrest is logged on the FBI’s national database and cross-referenced with ICE’s database of immigrants.
“This whole mess is basically a mess of [the city’s] own making,” said Attia, referring to a restrictive cap that has limited access to merchandise vending permits to 853 people for nearly five decades, contributing a growing number of criminal summonses and even arrests that have left many migrant merchandise vendors on Canal Street vulnerable.
“Everyone now is very skeptical and very terrified to go to work after this incident,” Attia said.
As agents made their way inside 26 Federal Plaza, members of the NYPD’s unit guarded the perimeter, clearing the way for the federal agents. A small crowd of onlookers remained outside Federal Plaza.
“This is the epitome of how disingenuous the Trump administration is about keeping communities safe,” Murad Awawdeh, head of the Immigration Coalition, who followed agents to 26 Federal Plaza. “The conditions that the Department of Homeland Security just created in the heart of New York City illustrates to New Yorkers and everyone who’s going to see what happened that this has never been about safety and security, and this is about cruelty.”
Elias Hernandez, a superintendent on Canal said he’d watched the arrests in horror, while tourists took videos. “A whole bunch of people taking pictures like it’s a movie. These guys getting arrested, it’s uncalled for,” he said. “He’s trying to make a living.”
THE CITY watched one such arrest on the corner of Canal and Church street, who people who worked on the block said he’d been selling bags there for more than 15 years.
“People just want to live,” said Lydia Leal, a Bronx woman who was on her way home from work when she saw the arrests on Canal and followed officers to 26 Federal Plaza. The men getting taken away reminded her of her father, who immigrated from Cuba seeking a better life, she said. “It’s not right.”
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