ICE arrests Canal St. vendor in ‘targeted operation’ right after NYPD raids

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided Canal St. in lower Manhattan again Saturday afternoon, arresting a West African migrant street vendor who was allegedly selling counterfeit goods.

The arrest, on Canal St. near Broadway around noon, came just about 15 minutes after the New York Police Department completed its own crackdown on vendors on the busy street — known as the go-to spot for fake Louis Vuitton and Gucci handbags and Beats headphones.

Sending the sellers fleeing, NYPD officers struck the scene twice — starting at 11 a.m., making an arrest about a half-hour later — in the hour just before the ICE arrest. But the NYPD had no interactions with federal agents and the ICE investigation had no connection to the NYPD, according to law enforcement sources.

Tricia McLaughlin, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s umbrella agency, said agents were specifically seeking to arrest the man they arrested.

“On November 22, ICE conducted a targeted operation in lower Manhattan to arrest Abdou Tall, an illegal alien from Senegal and criminal with multiple arrests related to the trafficking of counterfeit goods,” she said.

Tall fled the officers, running several blocks before tripping, falling and resisting arrest before being apprehended, McLaughlin added.

She accused the New York Police Department of failing to turn Tall over to ICE last month when he was arrested on trademark counterfeiting charges.

“This entire incident could have been avoided if the NYPD had simply honored our ICE detainer after arresting Tall on October 7 for trademark infringement,” McLaughlin said. “But instead of releasing him to ICE custody, they released this criminal illegal alien into the community, where he immediately resumed his criminal activities, leading to a second arrest by the NYPD for criminal trademark counterfeiting on October 11. This time, he was released by the NYPD before ICE could even file a detainer.”

New York City generally does not honor ICE detainers unless the individual has been convicted of a serious or violent crime or is on a terrorist watch list and ICE has a judicial warrant.

District 1 Councilman Christopher Marte condemned the ICE arrest Saturday and urged civilians to “distract” agents to prevent them from catching people.

“ICE was on Canal Street again,” Marte said on social media. “We cannot stand by as we witness illegal and racist kidnappings that terrorize our communities. If you see agents, make some noise, try to distract them, and contact ICE monitoring organizations.”

On Saturday evening, around 9 p.m., a halal cart vendor selling food at the intersection of Broadway and Canal St. said he saw three or four ICE agents chasing an “African” man heading east on Canal St. He said he recognized them as ICE agents because they were in green and wearing masks.

“It was quick,” he said, noting he didn’t see much.

A wallet seller said the arrested man, known to everyone as Abdou, was his friend.

“The first time ICE came, they took nine people,” he said, referring to a larger raid last month. “Today, for the second time, they take a person.”

Another seller said Tall sold handbags.

“To be honest, we are not safe here,” he said. “They’re taking all our stuff,” he added of the NYPD’s vendor enforcement operations.

“If we have anything else, we won’t do this,” he said of his work as an unlicensed street vendor. “We have to pay the rent, we have to pay everything. We don’t want to be in a shelter.”

After a busy day of raids, the sellers were extremely vigilant, bordering on paranoia. Every few minutes, when a police car passed by or if they spotted someone they feared was an infiltrator, they hoisted up their merchandise and prepared to flee. Their goods are laid out on tarpaulins, easy to quickly put together in packages, if necessary.

Just after 11 a.m., NYPD officers conducted a “routine vendor search” on Canal St. at Broadway, during which they seized counterfeit products filling more than 25 evidence bags, officers said. The sellers fled the scene as cops closed in, a source said.

Police conducted a second round of stops around 11:45 a.m., during which they confiscated more counterfeit products and arrested Diop Youssou, 47, a block away near the corner of Broadway and Lispenard St., charging him with trademark counterfeiting.

Youssou lives in the Melrose section of the Bronx, cops said.

Tall’s ICE arrest comes exactly one month after ICE agents rushed 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.

As dozens of ICE agents arrested a total of nine suspected undocumented sellers during the October 21 enforcement action, a crowd of people gathered to protest, then followed the agents to 26 Federal Plaza – the ICE processing and detention center in Manhattan – where a larger protest took place.

“ICE, they do whatever they want. They target our community,” Bobbie Baro, a longtime vendor from Mauritania, told The News after last month’s raid on Canal St. “They asked random people for ID – they didn’t have it and they took it away.”

Earlier this month, the Daily News reported that NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch received advance notice from the Trump administration last month that ICE agents would hours later conduct an immigration enforcement raid along Canal St. In response, sources say Tisch ordered NYPD officers to stay away from ICE agents as they arrested vendors along the busy shopping street.