he New York Police Department announced that it is training officers and buying equipment to counter weaponized drone threats during the FIFA World Cup and America 250 celebrations.
The NYPD said Thursday that it is buying $6.5 million in drone mitigation equipment ahead of the events and giving counterterrorism officers special training.
She noted the proliferation of weaponized drones in the Ukraine and Iran wars and said that it is the one threat that “keeps me up at night.”
When asked whether there was a specific threat involving weaponized drones, Tisch declined to elaborate, but she said, “It would be a mistake to ignore the technology.”
The Justice Department is expected to issue new rules to allow local police departments to take down drones, which has largely been reserved for the FBI.
The World Cup is set to begin on June 11 in cities across North America. The championship match is scheduled for July 19 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, just outside New York City.
World Cup-related events are to be held in New York City, including in Rockefeller Center. The city is also set to host several America 250 celebrations during the July 4th weekend, including Macy’s annual fireworks display.
Wegmans in New York City has begun collecting biometric data from anyone who enters its supermarkets, according to new signage posted at the chain’s Manhattan and Brooklyn locations earlier this month.
Anyone entering the store could have data on their face, eyes and voices collected and stored by the Rochester-headquartered supermarket chain. The information is used to “protect the safety and security of our patrons and employees,” according to the signage. The new scanning policy is an expansion of a 2024 pilot.
The chain had initially said that the scanning system was only for a small group of employees and promised to delete any biometric data it collected from shoppers during the pilot rollout. The new notice makes no such assurances.
Wegmans representatives did not reply to questions about how the data would be stored, why it changed its policy or if it would share the data with law enforcement.
Legislation aiming to block businesses from using such systems was introduced in the City Council in 2023 after Madison Square Garden CEO James Dolan used it to identify and boot two attorneys who worked for law firms with active litigation against his company. But the bill has languished, and other supermarket chains like Fairway already use biometric collection systems.
Councilmember Shahana Hanif is the bill’s primary sponsor. She did not reply to a request for comment on Wegmans’ expanded collection program.
Wegmans and other businesses that collect biometric data are required to post signs announcing the practice because of a 2021 city law, but it’s unclear how many other companies may be using similar practices.
The agency in charge of implementing the law has no enforcement mechanism for businesses that don’t comply, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, who said that customers are free to pursue their own legal action.
Will Owen, a privacy advocate with the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said that storing customer’s biometric data can open them up to risks from hackers or immigration enforcement.
“It’s really chilling that immigrant New Yorkers going into Wegmans and other grocery stores have to worry about their highly sensitive biometric data potentially getting into the hands of ICE,” he said.
Blaze Herbas, 29, said she shopped at the store but would avoid it in the future.
“We should be able to shop freely without data being saved on us. That’s obvious,” she said.
ICE’s mass raid of Canal st on Saturday November 29th was bamboozled by rapid response / icewatch groups & normies on the street. This is a reportback about that.
Background:
In the week prior to the raid, community rapid response groups / anti-ice patrols somehow heard that ICE was planning another Canal St operation that would be larger than the first, potentially utilizing hundreds of feds to carry it out. These rapid response groups, though having existed in different iterations since the 2010’s, have had a much more crystallized, effective mode of organizing in the past several months. Most of these groups recently have used autonomous / decentralized methods of organization largely organized by geographic location. While there are formalized “ICE watch” orgs, most are fairly informal and don’t have any social media or other public presence. Through these different groups, there has been a city-wide effort at coordinating for sharing of resources (plate data etc) & for sharing confirmed ICE raids for rapid response. Mentioning this in regards to the Saturday raid is important because while it’s been categorized in the media as a “protest” that people responded to due to a call on social media, that’s really not the case, at least from this perspective.
The broader context for ICE raids in New York is that while ICE has been active, it hasn’t looked the same as many other large cities. For the most part, DHS/ICE has made small snatch and grabs across the boroughs, and notably many arrests in and around the immigration court system in Manhattan. The last attempt at a “flood the streets” mass scoop-up raid was around a month prior, and was also on Canal St targeting vendors there. That one was successful for them in that ICE was able to make several deportation arrests and also have a big photo op, propaganda win of “cleaning up dirty NYC.” That said, there was a community response to that raid as well and it ended with large groups of people chasing the feds back to their house at Federal Plaza. The response to that raid was much more spontaneous and reactive than the most recent one.
Events on Saturday
Due to groups of activists becoming aware of the potential raid, Federal Plaza was likely surveilled to confirm the deployment of ICE cops into the city for staging. The morning of, lots of community activists set to informing vendors & other people near Canal that a large ICE action was imminent. This was the main purpose for people being on Canal, not a demonstration or denunciation of what was about to happen. That said, after that work was complete many people began to gather at a government garage that it had been discovered that ICE was staging at.
At this time, there was no NYPD presence directly around the garage, but it was clear that there were many city cops staged in the area and had been made aware of the raid and asked to do crowd control by ICE. As the morning went on, people on the street also began joining the crowds outside the garage, and at some point a call had gone out on social media that likely brought people out as well. At one point ICE opened the garage door to assess the situation, and the crowd began chanting “ICE OUT OF NEW YORK.”
Very soon after the door opening, soft barricades of trash cans, traffic cones and other trash started appearing in the driveway behind the crowd. NYPD was on the scene at this point, and over the next hour began getting between the Feds & the crowd and started making space for the Feds to potentially egress. While confrontation between NYPD & the crowd starting happening, in the area up the street from the garage a construction dumpster started being unloaded of its contents onto the street. In addition, there were other trash cans, pallets, etc. that moved themselves to be along the potential route of exit to Canal.
This siege continued for several hours, with the ICE agents being trapped inside the garage from 10AM until the early afternoon. NYPD made several arrests in this time, but were largely focused on erecting their barricades to split the crowd in 2-3 groups and prepare the street for the convoy of feds to leave. As time went on it became clear that if ICE was going to attempt a raid anywhere near in Lower Manhattan / Chinatown, these crowds would follow.
When the cars finally began to exit the garage, several brave people sprinted to jump in front of the convoy. This slowed it down enough for other people to begin dragging shit into the street to further hamper the convoy’s exit. The convoy made it to Canal street, and it was extremely chaotic. SRG did their best to be next to them / around them and make arrests and clear the street of trash. While on Canal christmas trees, pallets, trash cans, ad signs, clay pots and more were thrown quickly in the way of the vans. In addition, projectiles were thrown from afar at the vehicles.
Eventually the convoy split in 2 parts, with half going back to Federal Plaza and the other half (mostly the white vans) heading for the Holland Tunnel to Jersey. After the action had ended, community groups continued to monitor canal st / fed plaza in case the feds tried to return. In addition anti-ice patrols happened with increased capacity for the rest of the day and the next in case they tried to do a raid in a different borough. NYPD made about 10 arrests throughout the day, and charged 2 of those people with assaults on officers. For the amount of things that happened and the amount of people that were there, this is a relatively low amount of arrests.
This action seemed to be a huge win for those who have been working hard at building community infrastructure to respond to impending ICE action in NYC. It was encouraging as fuck and really cool to see.
Fuck ICE and the next time they pop their heads up lets hope motherfuckers whack em again. Pretty sure ICE got their tires slashed on Staten Island recently, that is very cool.
For the second time in just over a month, a large-scale raid by dozens of immigration agents in New York City was met with a similarly large-scale counter-protest. This time, however, the protesters thwarted the authorities’ plans before they began.
Multiple arrests were made on Saturday during scuffles on the edge of Chinatown, during which hundreds of protesters faced off with federal agents and the New York Police Department (NYPD) as they prepared to launch a raid in the area.
It comes just a month after a raid by 50 federal agents using military-style vehicles stormed Canal Street in Lower Manhattan, and was met with a protest of hundreds in response.
The confrontation also comes amid a reported surge in activity by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the city in recent weeks, despite a friendly encounter between the Mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, and President Donald Trump earlier this month that appeared to avert a showdown over the issue.
But the mass counter-protest of some 200 people demonstrates the challenges federal authorities will face in enforcing President Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown in a city that is rooted in its immigrant identity.
Immigration crackdowns in other cities like Chicago and Portland have been met with similar responses from locals opposed to the Trump Administration’s hardline immigration agenda, but New York could prove to be the toughest challenge yet.
Saturday’s incident demonstrated how the city’s physical infrastructure —its narrow streets and densely populated areas, built mostly by immigrant labor over the last two centuries—can impede ICE’s so-called “enforcement surges,” which require large numbers of agents moving quickly in and out of an area.
Not only are large-scale ICE raids being met by hundreds of protesters, but in two months, New York will be led by an immigrant mayor for the first time in 50 years. Mamdani, who moved to the United States when he was seven years old, campaigned on protecting New York’s immigrant community from these very same raids.
‘Agitators’ in ‘goggles’
The confrontation began on Saturday, when agents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) gathered in a parking garage in a federal building on the edge of Chinatown in preparation for a raid.
Videos of the incident show protesters blocking the agents as they try to leave the garage in their cars. The crowd then swells to the hundreds, as more NYPD officers arrive.
Later, according to reports, federal agents emerged from the garage and assisted the NYPD in detaining protesters.
The DHS blamed “agitators” for blocking the federal agents in a statement to [news source].
“Following social media posts calling agitators to ICE’s location in New York City, individuals dressed in black clothing with backpacks, face masks, and goggles showed up and began to obstruct federal law enforcement officers including by blocking the parking garage,” the statement said. “NYPD was called and responded to hundreds of violent rioters, which resulted in the arrest of multiple agitators.”
Murad Awawdeh, President of the immigrant advocacy group the New York Immigration Coalition and a member of Mamdani’s transition team, said the protests this weekend were a sign that the city would put up fierce resistance to federal immigration operations.
“New York City is unlike any other place in this country or even the world, and what you have seen yesterday and time and again is that New Yorkers of all stripes, across all creeds, are not going to allow a rogue, lawless, violent and horrific agency to continue to mess with their neighbors.”
The attempted raid in Lower Manhattan comes amid an increase in ICE activity in New York City over the past few weeks. On Oct. 21, in a separate raid on Canal Street, nine people from Africa were taken into custody by ICE agents during what DHS called a “targeted, intelligence-driven enforcement operation…focused on criminal activity relating to selling counterfeit goods.” The raid, which involved more than 50 federal agents, also led to the arrest of five protestors after people reportedly attempted to chase federal agents away. The DHS claimed protestors were blocking vehicles and obstructing law enforcement duties.
In recent weeks, ICE agents have been spotted with greater frequency in immigrant neighborhoods of Corona in Queens, Washington Heights in Manhattan, and Sunset Park in Brooklyn.
Activists in those neighborhoods have responded to the increased ICE activity by organizing community alert systems, such as handing out whistles to be used when agents are seen in the area. The strategies resemble ICE Watch in other cities hit especially hard by Trump’s immigration crackdown, such as Chicago, where groups like Protect Rogers Park enlist community members to follow and report on ICE activity in the area.
An autonomous group dropped a banner as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade began on Central Park West in New York City today. Its message, NO THANKS FOR COLONIALISM, NO FORGIVENESS FOR GENOCIDE, hung along the route for the duration of the parade, a crack in the highly surveilled and commercialized spectacle of colonial amnesia. At the same time, across the bridge in Brooklyn, another autonomous group dropped a banner from the BQE, reading FUCK YOUR TURKEY, LAND BACK—a moment of confrontation for people driving upstate for their business-as-usual Thanksgiving celebrations.
This land is watered by blood, and every harvest reaped is the result of genocide. Fuck Thanksgiving, a nation-wide whitewashing of the holocaust carried out by European colonizers against millions of indigenous people, in the name of a nation that gorges itself on murder and plunder every day. From Plymouth Rock to Palestine, no forgiveness for genocide.
A banner will not weaken our enemies, but working together on actions like these can make us stronger in the protracted struggle for life free of the settler state. Far bolder action is necessary. Those who seek to end colonial and imperialist domination are honing their ability to carry out collective action in clandestinity. And they are looking for friends. Together we willdestroy this empire.
-some people
live video: https://x.com/taliaotg/status/1994041628374520237 photos below
An immigration enforcement sweep targeting vendors on Manhattan’s famed Canal Street turned chaotic on Tuesday after droves of angry New Yorkers surrounded federal agents and attempted to block them from driving off, prompting arrests and fierce standoffs along a bustling downtown corridor.
The confrontation began shortly after 4 p.m., as federal agents fanned out across a section of Chinatown that has long served as a not-so-underground market for knock-off designer handbags, watches, perfumes, electronics and other goods.
A [news source] reporter observed dozens of agents detaining a street vendor selling bedazzled smartphone cases, one of a number of arrests in the area.
In response, a contingent of protesters, many of whom appeared to be on their way home from work, surrounded the masked officers, attempting to block their vehicle as they shouted “ICE out of New York” and called on other pedestrians to join them.
Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol and other federal offices then tried to clear the streets, in some cases shoving protesters to the ground and threatening them with pepper spray before detaining them.
As more New Yorkers joined the fray, some of the federal agents retreated on foot, followed by jeering protesters and honking vehicles. Additional federal agents, armed with long guns and tactical gear, also arrived in a military tactical vehicle.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said the agents were conducting an enforcement operation against sellers of “counterfeit goods”
“During this law enforcement operation, rioters who were shouting obscenities, became violent and obstructed law enforcement duties including blocking vehicles and assaulting law enforcement,” she said.
Trump has threatened to send federal troops to the city if Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, wins election in two weeks.
An FBI spokesperson said Tuesday that special agents were involved with immigration enforcement efforts in New York in response to a request from DHS to help with “major operations.”
October 23, 2025
Federal authorities said 14 people, including immigrants and demonstrators, were arrested in Tuesday’s sweep. The Department of Homeland Security said it was a targeted operation focused on the alleged sale of counterfeit goods, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting Director Todd Lyons said it was “definitely intelligence-driven.”
“It’s not random. We’re just not pulling people off the street,” he told Fox News on Wednesday.
But some vendors saw it as an indiscriminate and heavy-handed crackdown by masked agents who queried a wide swath of sellers.
Awa Ngam was selling sweaters Wednesday from a table at a Canal Street intersection where at least one of her fellow vendors was taken away the previous afternoon.
She said she also was asked for ID, showed it, and then for her passport, which she doesn’t carry around. Agents quizzed her about how she had come to the U.S., but they eventually backed off after her husband explained that she’s an American citizen, she said.
Some other sellers decried the sweep as harassment. Others were keeping a low-profile and shied from speaking with journalists.
Signs freshly posted on streetlights mentioned Tuesday’s sweep and urged people at risk of detention to call an immigration law group’s helpline.
Law enforcement raids aimed at combating counterfeiting are relatively frequent on Canal Street, which is known for its stalls and shops where some vendors hawk knock-off designer goods and bootlegged wares. Federal authorities often team up with the New York Police Department and luxury brands on crackdowns aimed at shutting down illicit trade.
But the sight of dozens of masked ICE and other federal agents making arrests drew instant protests.
Nine people were arrested in the initial immigration sweep, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said. Four more people were arrested on charges of assaulting federal law enforcement officers, she said, adding that a fifth was arrested and accused of obstructing law enforcement by blocking a driveway.
The sweep came after at least two conservative influencers shared video on X of men selling bags on Canal Street’s sidewalks.
While clashes between immigration authorities and protesters have played out in Los Angeles and other cities, such scenes have been rarer on New York City streets, which Mayor Eric Adams has attributed in part to his working relationship with President Donald Trump’s administration.
Dozens of federal agents, mostly masked, swarmed into downtown Manhattan near Chinatown on Tuesday afternoon, stepping out of unmarked vehicles and detaining several New Yorkers around the busy commercial area in a hectic raid that targeted people who fit the profile of a counterfeit goods vendor.
At one point early in the raid, a group of roughly 15 agents was quickly surrounded by residents and journalists as they took a Black man, who identified himself as Edwin, into custody against a wall. The agents maintained a perimeter around the arrest; nearby, bewildered tourists could be seen trying to figure out what was going on. Some locals filmed the arrest themselves, heckling the agents, telling them, among other things, to leave the city. Edwin yelled that he did not have his ID on him but was from Brooklyn and demanded agents release him as he also hurled expletives directed at President Donald Trump. After agents let him go, he confronted them, demanding that they “suck my dick,” prompting one agent to threaten to arrest him again, before Edwin eventually left.
Several people who had been detained were released after agents checked their IDs. Another Black man who did not identify himself later told Hell Gate that agents had detained him without warning and then released him after checking his ID. Some agents appeared to be holding bundles of papers with photos on them, presumably arrest targets.
A person with knowledge about the raid told Hell Gate that agents from ICE, the DEA, the IRS, and the FBI had all been brought into the operation, which they said was hastily planned. They confirmed that the raid was targeted toward the counterfeit goods sellers on Canal Street. Homeland Security Investigation’s Strategic Response Team—the agency’s version of SWAT—was also there with an armored vehicle, though Hell Gate did not witness anyone leaving the vehicle or it being used in any way. Most agents participating in the raid had street clothes and bulletproof vests with small firearms, though at least one carried what looked like an M4-style long gun.
(Felipe De La Hoz / Hell Gate)
One agent present appeared to be the ICE agent who was briefly relieved of duties last month after he was filmed aggressively pushing a woman down at the 26 Federal Plaza immigration court in a viral video, though Hell Gate could not confirm his identity. According to reporting in [news source], that agent, who remains publicly unnamed, was quickly reinstated after a brief preliminary review of the incident, in which he tackled the distraught wife of a man agents had just detained. At the downtown raid, he was one of the few agents without a face covering.
Small teams of six or seven agents soon splintered off to do their own rounds. They mostly seemed to move between Bayard and Hester Streets to the south and north and Broadway and Bowery to the east and west. One fruit seller on Canal told Hell Gate that a group of agents had gone by in the direction of Broadway and then quickly come back around, somewhat aimlessly. “I’m not sure what they wanted,” she said. Hell Gate followed one group for about 10 minutes as it moved around the area, jaywalking and fanning out across the sidewalk, but did not witness them approach or interact with any pedestrians or drivers. Pedestrians who walked by them often seemed surprised to see the group, and many reacted viscerally, shouting out to warn others that there were federal agents approaching. At one point, they went down into the Canal Street subway station, looked around, and went back up the stairs.
(Felipe De La Hoz / Hell Gate)
During this lap, the group passed an NYPD Strategic Response Group vehicle idling on Walker Street. An officer with that group told Hell Gate that they were there incidentally and did not have advance notice of the operation and were not assisting federal counterparts or monitoring the situation. When reached for comment, a spokesperson for the NYPD pointed to a statement that the agency posted to X, which said that “the NYPD had no involvement in the federal operation that took place on Canal Street this afternoon.”
Other than those officers, Hell Gate did not see any state or local law enforcement in the immediate vicinity for the start of the raid. Federal agents did not respond to verbal questions about their targets, intent, or personnel. A request sent out to ICE with similar questions did not receive an immediate response.
While Tuesday’s operation netted relatively few arrests in comparison to the volume of agents present, this mass, highly visible federal raid comes on the heels of another sudden raid outside of a migrant shelter, part of an escalation in tactics after a period in which arrests were largely confined to the city’s immigration courts. Donald Trump has been vocal about wanting to deploy agents to New York City in the same manner as aggressive operations in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.
This federal show of force comes just a couple days after right-wing internet personality Savannah Hernandez posted on X about “African illegal immigrants…operating a black market” on Canal Street, and two weeks before a mayoral election in which frontrunner Zohran Mamdani has promised to more aggressively confront federal agents operating in the city. The NYPD has separately been cracking down on street vendors, including those selling counterfeit goods, as part of its renewed focus on “quality of life” enforcement.
Hell Gate did not see federal videographers of the sort seen filming footage for Homeland Security sizzle reels promoted on social media and elsewhere, though the person with knowledge of the raid said that at least one government photographer had been present.
As the raid progressed, officers from different agencies stood or walked around and were yelled at by passersby. Small crowds formed near agents standing on street corners and curbs or inside their cars, as protesters called them “fucking fascists” and “scum.” Hell Gate overheard one agent exasperatedly telling another, “Well I guess we’ll just RTB then,” using an acronym for “returning to base.” Still, while some agents began to leave the area around 4 p.m., several groups of agents remained and conducted additional arrests. Many were subsequently swarmed by angry locals, who called the agents racists and demanded they leave the city. According to [news source], federal agents arrested some protesters, tackling some people to the ground and using their batons and riot shields to control the crowd.
New York City and state officials were among dozens of people arrested at a demonstration opposing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Downtown Manhattan on Thursday.
It happened at 26 Federal Plaza, an ICE holding facility that has been a source of controversy over the past several months.
Protesters chanted during an outside sit-in in front of a driveway of the building, objecting to the treatment of detainees held there, before authorities moved in to make arrests. Another group also moved in on the 10th floor, demanding to see conditions there before they, too, were arrested.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 71 people, including two state senators and nine state Assembly members, were arrested. DHS also said the building was later placed on lockdown due to a bomb threat.
Five envelopes containing a suspicious white powder were discovered at New York’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Manhattan Thursday afternoon – prompting first responders to evacuate the federal building, according to authorities.
Fire officials responded to 26 Federal Plaza on Foley Square just before 4 p.m. after personnel found the menacing letters containing the mysterious substance in the 9th-floor mailroom of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Office Building, officials said.
The historic address, also home to the US Department of Homeland Security, immigration court and other federal agencies, was swiftly evacuated as the fire department’s hazmat teams investigated.
There were no reported injuries, officials said.
“Right now, no threat remains to any employees or the public at this time,” Christopher Raia, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s New York office, told reporters during a news conference Thursday night.
“Sending threatening letters of this nature, whether real or a hoax… diverts valuable, limited law enforcement resources.”
Test results are currently pending to identify the white powder.
The envelopes will then be sent to the FBI’s Quantico lab in Virginia for further analysis as the agency launches its own probe.
The shocking incident, seemingly targeting ICE’s 9th-floor offices, comes two days after a federal judge ordered the agency to improve its immigration holding facility following complaints from jailed migrants over inhumane conditions.
The Lower Manhattan building has become a hub for arrests as the Trump administration continues its aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration.
ICE facilities and officers have been targeted by violence since the administration ramped up arrests and deportations.
A Blackstone executive who oversaw Blackstone’s real estate fund, an NYPD officer working a paid detail, an employee of real estate firm Rudin Management, and a security officer.
LePatner joined Blackstone in 2014 after more than a decade at Goldman Sachs, according to Blackstone. While overseeing BREIT, a trust with a real estate portfolio totaling more than $53 billion in property, LePatner was also a member of Blackstone’s real estate investment committee. Blackstone is a global leader in private equity, real estate, credit and hedge funds, with over $1 trillion in assets under management.
Islam had worked as a police officer in the city for three and a half years and was one of two New York police officers working as paid security detail in the building.
The NFL told The New York Times one of its employees was seriously injured in the shooting.
The alleged shooter drove from Las Vegas. He went into 345 Park Ave. in midtown just after the end of business Monday armed with an M4 rifle and opened fire in the lobby and again on the 33rd floor before he eventually killed himself, officials said. Security video showed the shooter get out of a double-parked black BMW while carrying the rifle.
A former Granada Hills football teammate said he excelled on the field and led mostly by example.
