Yves here. Protest against Trump policies so far appears to not be accomplishing much, even in the face of his rising disapproval ratings. Pink pussy hats and No Kings marches do not appear to have had any impact on his actions.<\/p>\n
However, unlike the 1960s Vietnam War and civil rights marches, demonstrations against Trump have often been about Trump the person or an inchoate opposition to Trump authoritarianism, as opposed to seeking to reverse particular policies. Here the ICE component of anti-Trump action is different in having a clear focus. And as we will discuss below, a weekend on-the-fly effort in New York City to stop an ICE raid does appear to have been narrowly successful, in that the raid did not come off, and that despite the NYPD coming in to clear out the protests, police chief Jessica Tisch called ICE to complain, apparently fiercely, about the raid.<\/p>\n
Even though NYPD did come in to assist ICE to escape having been temporarily contained in one of its facilities, I infer (it is not clearly explained in the accounts I have seen so far) that what may have been the point of contention is the way ICE left when it finally could leave. Tisch\u2019s objection was that ICE had endangered the safety of NYC citizens and the police. Remember that even under current mayor Eric Adams, NYPD is not assisting ICE; it came to the scene due to the clash with protestors and protestors using pallets and trash to try to block the intended ICE advance. From the New York Times account<\/a>:<\/p>\n The confrontation, which appeared to foil the raid, underscored the numerous challenges the federal government faces in trying to stage raids in a dense city like New York, where pushback from protesters in a largely liberal city appears inevitable.<\/p>\n The standoff began just after 11 a.m., when a handful of protesters gathered outside a garage on the edge of Chinatown, on Centre and Hester Streets, where agents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security had been arriving.<\/p>\n As the agents\u2019 vehicles moved to leave, protesters blocked them, forming a barricade at the mouth of the garage with their bodies and piling mounds of garbage bags beside them. The standoff continued for the better part of an hour as more and more protesters arrived.<\/p>\n By the early afternoon, nearly 200 people had gathered on the street outside, chanting and yelling at the agents, who peered out from inside the garage.<\/p>\n Police officers soon arrived on the scene, arresting a handful of protesters and placing metal barricades between the agents and the group outside. But the presence of local law enforcement did little to ease tensions\u2026<\/p>\n Just after 1:15 p.m., the confrontation erupted into chaos when agents burst from the garage in their vehicles and protesters chased them down Canal Street, hurling planters and trash cans after them. At one point, a protester ran in front of one of the moving vehicles and a masked agent sprayed something at protesters from the open windows.<\/p>\n On the street, police officers and protesters continued to clash, shoving each other in the middle of incoming traffic while the vehicles sped away\u2026<\/p>\n Jessica Tisch, the head of the New York Police Department, vehemently criticized the actions of the federal agents during a phone call on Saturday with Ricky Patel, the special agent in charge of New York\u2019s Homeland Security Investigations office, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly. She told him that the raid was \u201cunacceptable\u201d and that such shows of force had put New Yorkers, federal agents and her officers in harm\u2019s way, the person said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It is fashionable among both conservatives and the avocado toast crowd to denigrate militancy, since it threatens property, which they seem as more important than human rights. And in general protest does look ineffective in the near term. As reader Richard Kline pointed out in 2010<\/a>:<\/p>\n The nut of the matter is this: you lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, they give up. As someone who has protested, and studied the process, it\u2019s plain that one spends most of one\u2019s time begin defeated. That\u2019s painful, humiliating, and intimidating. One can\u2019t expect typically, as in a battle, to get a clean shot at a clear win. What you do with protest is just what Hari discusses, you change the context, and that change moves the goalposts on your opponent, grounds out the current in their machine. The nonviolent resistance in Hungary in the 1860s (yes, that\u2019s in the 19th century) is an excellent example. Communist rule in Russia and its dependencies didn\u2019t fail because protestors \u2018won\u2019 but because most simply withdrew their cooperation to the point it suffocated.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n However, the Trump administration brooks no opposition and is fond of using violence to get its way. Will refusniks match them, as Frederick Douglass warned was necessary?<\/p>\n Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n By Gwynne Hogan, Alex Krales and Katie Honan. Published at THE CITY on November 29, 2025<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The NYPD arrested more than a dozen people and unleashed clouds of pepper spray on a spontaneous protest formed around a SoHo parking garage where masked agents with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had gathered inside.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear exactly what the federal agents had planned for Saturday. Around 11 a.m the agents began staging inside the federally owned parking facility at Howard and Center Streets, near the spot on Canal Street where federal agents using military gear had carried out a wave of arrests<\/a> of immigrant street vendors last month.<\/p>\n Hellgate reported<\/a> ICE had planned another large-scale immigration raid for Saturday afternoon that got hastily called off as protesters and vendors appeared to have heard of it.<\/p>\n Word quickly spread among activists and a growing crowd formed outside the garage chanting \u201cICE out of New York,\u201d as some demonstrators attempted to block the street and garage exits with traffic cones and overturned trash cans while masked agents looked on from above.<\/p>\n NYPD officers arrived on the scene and helped the agents shove protesters out of the way, erecting metal barricades around the parking garage and arresting several demonstrators. After a standoff that lasted roughly two hours, the officers managed to clear the way for around two dozen federal vehicles to exit the parking garage and leave the area.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really despicable, it seems like the NYPD \u2014 especially the [Strategic Response Group, the NYPD\u2019s counter-terrorism unit] \u2014 is working to clear the way for ICE agents to go out in our city to do arrests,\u201d said local City Councilmember Christopher Marte, who rushed to the street after hearing about the standoff.<\/p>\n A statement provided by the NYPD said officers arrived shortly before noon after getting a 911 call for a \u201cdisorderly group.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUpon arrival, officers observed multiple individuals who were blocking the street and exits at different locations. The individuals were also observed throwing debris,\u201d the statement said. \u201cThey were instructed multiple times to disperse, and they did not comply. As a result, multiple individuals were taken into custody.\u201d<\/p>\n In an emailed statement, DHS declined to say what agents had planned for Saturday and thanked the NYPD for intervening.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are grateful for the NYPD officers that responded to these violent agitators and stopped the lawlessness that ensued,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will never apologize for enforcing the law and removing criminal illegal aliens including murderers, pedophiles, rapists, gang members and terrorists from our communities. We won\u2019t let violent rioters slow us down, and anyone who assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted them [sic] to the fullest extent of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment from THE CITY.<\/p>\n Monica Klein, a spokesperson for Zohran Mamdani, said in a statement that \u201cthe Mayor-elect has made it clear \u2014 including to the President \u2014 that these raids are cruel and inhumane and fail to advance genuine public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Mayor-elect remains steadfast in his commitment to protecting the rights and dignity of every single New Yorker, upholding our sanctuary laws and deescalation rather than use of unnecessary force,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n As the stream of federal vans and cars attempted to leave the area, smaller groups of protesters left a path of overturned trash cans and debris along Canal Street attempting to slow them down. Dozens of NYPD officers pursued the protesters, unleashing clouds of pepper spray<\/a> and making several more arrests along Canal Street.<\/p>\n \u201cYou understand this is not your battle,\u201d said Kaleed Ravis, 52, pleading with NYPD officers to be gentle with one protester who had his arm twisted behind his back. Ravis, a New Jersey resident, was out shopping when he heard the commotion and joined the protesters.<\/p>\n The throngs of federal agents, NYPD officers and protesters cause chaos along Canal Street for several hours on \u201cSmall Business Saturday,\u201d a huge day for tourists and holiday shoppers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re really nosy, it\u2019s the Scottish in us,\u201d said one Scottish tourist who had stopped to observe, declining to give her name.<\/p>\n Nineteen-year-old Ali Boussi had come to Canal Street to \u201cget some fake Gucci\u201d while visiting his dad from Detroit, though he hadn\u2019t been able to find any for sale that day, as street vendors \u2014 who had been out selling on Canal on Friday \u2014 had seemed to have cleared out for the day.<\/p>\n \u201cFuck ICE, why are they doing this? We\u2019re all one kind,\u201d he said. \u201cIt hurts me inside. We\u2019re all people.\u201d<\/p>\n Dozens of federal agents descended on Canal Street in October<\/a> targeting street vendors, arresting nine West African immigrants, the largest military-style immigration raids in New York City. Since then, ICE agents have randomly detained<\/a> undocumented New Yorkers on the street, targeting predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods which activists and lawyers have called profiling.<\/p>\n There have been other violent raids, including one earlier this month<\/a>, when agents burst into a woman\u2019s apartment in East Elmhurst before dawn looking for a relative that no longer lived there.<\/p>\n The agents pointed a gun at a 33-year-old mother and her four children, dragging her by her hair and pointing an assault rifle at her 13-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n \u201cPut your fucking hands up, stupid,\u201d one agent was heard yelling in a brief video of the raid.<\/p>\n Earlier this month border czar Tom Homan vowed to increase<\/a> immigration raids and has said he plans to visit New York City in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n\n
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