Immigrant advocates tried to stop a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency operation Saturday on Canal Street by blocking the entrance to a Chinatown garage and temporarily preventing the masked agents from conducting an operation, officials and advocates said.
ICE agents needed to call in the NYPD to detain and push back the protesters as they blocked the sidewalk and the garage entrance. Cops pepper-sprayed a handful of protesters as they tried to chase the departing ICE motorcade and throw items at their vehicles.
The confrontation started just before noon as a large crowd of protesters dropped cones and stood in front of the entrance to the Centre St. garage near Howard St. — about a block from Canal St. Videos on news sites and social media show masked agents going back inside the garage as the protesters showed up. Some of them watched the protesters from a second-floor landing.
Within an hour, dozens of protesters had converged on the garage. ICE agents called in the NYPD to set up barricades and push the protesters blocking the sidewalk and egress to the garage back so they could leave.
“Is this what you want, tearing America apart?” one protester demanded to know from an ICE agent.
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Immigration activists block ICE vans during a protest against a purported ICE raid on Canal Street on Saturday. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
Other protesters linked arms across the garage entrance, chanting “ICE out of New York!” as others pounded on the plastic barricades.
An NYPD spokesman said that multiple arrests were effected as cops pushed the protesters back across the street, but didn’t have a complete number. At least 10 protesters were seen taken into custody.
Some protesters learned a procession of ICE agents were leaving the garage from another entrance and ran over, but were stopped by cops. A caravan of vehicles headed North but there was no indication of any activity on Canal Street.
A request for comment from Homeland Security was not immediately returned. Confrontation between ICE agents and protesters in other cities have resulted in stepped up activity amid the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
Sources said that protesters learned of a scheduled ICE operation on Canal St. much like the one that occurred a month ago when agents swooped down on Canal St. in a surprise raid targeting illegal street vendors.
The action stretched along Canal St., from Church St. to Lafayette St., between Chinatown, Soho and Tribeca.
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A person is detained by NYPD officers after immigration activists tried to block ICE vans during a protest against a purported ICE raid on Canal Street on November 29. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
As dozens of ICE agents detained a total of nine allegedly undocumented vendors at the Oct. 21 enforcement action. A crowd of people gathered to protest, then followed the agents down to 26 Federal Plaza — ICE’s Manhattan processing and detention center — where a larger protest took place.
“ICE, they do what they want to do. They target our community,” Bobbie Baro, a longtime vendor originally from Mauritania, told The News after last month’s Canal St. raid. “They asked random people for ID — they didn’t have it, and they took them down.”
Earlier this month, the Daily News reported that NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch received advance notice from the Trump administration last month that ICE agents were hours later going to conduct an immigration enforcement raid along Canal St. In response, sources say Tisch directed NYPD officers to stay away from the ICE agents as they arrested vendors along the busy shopping street.