Read our editorial on mass deportations here, and the ongoing struggle against it here.
On the afternoon of November 29, about 200 protesters prevented an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in Manhattan, engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police and blocking off government vehicles with makeshift barricades. The raid would have been ICE’s second large-scale operation in lower Manhattan over the past six weeks.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents were assembling in a parking garage on the edge of Chinatown. People quickly took notice, with word spreading on social media, and by the early afternoon about 200 protesters were blocking the agents’ vehicles from leaving by linking arms and making piles of garbage bags. The blockade lasted for over an hour, ending only after the NYPD was called in.
When agents were leaving the garage under the protection of the NYPD, protesters chased their cars, throwing trash cans and planters at them. In response, a masked agent sprayed an unknown substance from a car window.
NYPD, particularly its Strategic Response Group—a highly-militarized unit that specializes in brutalizing protesters—came to ICE’s aid in spades, arresting protesters en masse and setting up barricades between the protesters and agents, despite it being against city law for the NYPD to assist the federal government in immigration-related arrests.
The strike-busting NYPD police commissioner and billionaire heiress Jessica Tisch—who has accepted mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s request to remain in her position—allegedly criticized the agents’ actions over a private phone call, yet did nothing to stop the NYPD from facilitating those actions.
A few days after the protest, Mamdani released a video telling people, “Do not impede [ICE’s] investigation, resist arrest, or run.”
Scattered ICE agents have been spotted across the city in recent weeks, but large-scale operations have been comparatively uncommon. The first large-scale ICE operation over the past six weeks resulted in nine arrests of allegedly undocumented immigrants. The operation was cut short after federal agents faced resistance, with about 100 protesters chasing agents down the street as they retreated into ICE offices. Once again, NYPD came to ICE’s aid, arresting protesters and protecting ICE as they carried out abductions.
Despite New York City’s status as a so-called “sanctuary city” and mayor Eric Adams’ two-faced denunciation of ICE raids, ICE is regularly supported by police in carrying out their terror, using loopholes such as “crowd-control assistance” to skirt around the flimsy laws. The only thing that has stopped ICE terror is the violent rebellion of the people, which both party mafias collude to quell.
Image: Protesters block ICE agents in a parking garage as NYPD guards the entrance. Credit: Patrick Sharp, PolitiClips on X.
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