NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: Evening Roundup: ICE Raid Sparks Chaos in Chinatown, and City Unveils a Plan for “The Hole”

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Federal immigration agents stormed Canal Street in Chinatown Tuesday, detaining several men and setting off spontaneous protests from bystanders. Homeland Security officials say the raid targeted counterfeit goods but the incident is reigniting debate over federal immigration enforcement in New York City. WNYC’s Karen Yi reports. Plus, Mayor Eric Adams says there’s finally a plan to fix “The Hole” a long neglected neighborhood straddling Brooklyn and Queens that’s been plagued for decades by flooding and poor infrastructure. WNYC’s Liam Quigley has the latest.

What we know about the chaotic ice raid in Chinatown that left several people detained, a neglected neighborhood known as the whole. From WNYC, this is NYC now. I'm Jene Pierre. On Tuesday, dozens of ICE agents and federal officers fanned out across a strip of Canal Street and Broadway, detaining several men in Chinatown. The scene was so chaotic, it riled up bystanders who led an impromptu person. test. WMYC's Karen Ye is with us now to unpack it all. So Karen, how did this start? Well, this initially

started with our newsroom getting a tip that there was going to be some sort of ice activity around Canal Street and Broadway. And when our reporters headed there, it was actually quite quiet. I mean, this is an area where vendors typically line the sidewalk, selling bags and purses and sunglasses, but they seemed spooked just because there was a lot of media there, a lot of television crews. But around 3 p.m., one of the vendors started yelling. saying ice is here and was pointing to these unmarked vans that were rolling up. And then dozens of federal agents to send it on the area. Some of them were masks.

Some were vests that said, quote, federal police agent or police. And they started detaining men along the sidewalk and asking others for their identification. Some were released once they showed ID. Bystander, Kaden Cumming, says he saw people being put into vans and says the agents weren't really explaining who they were or why they were there. Nobody's identifying themselves, explaining, there's no due process going on. It's just straight in the back of a van if you are African on Canal. Karen, do we know what prompted this raid in the first place?

Canal Street is known for the place to be in Chinatown where you can get a coach bag for the low. That's absolutely right. I mean, everyone knows tourists come here precisely to get their knockoff, Gucci, Prada, sunglasses, their bags. And that's not new. That's sort of been happening for many, many years. So we don't actually know what was a triggering point. The Department of Homeland Security says the raid was targeting criminal activity relating to selling counterfeit goods. That's all they would say.

But what we do know is on Sunday, right, two days before this raid, a far right commentator with the group Turning Point USA wrote on X, sort of taking a video of herself in the area saying there's an illegal black market here, maybe I should check it out. And then we see the rate happen on Tuesday. Yeah. But like you mentioned, this is it new? So what else is DHS saying about this? They really haven't said much more than that, right? They're just sort of saying, you know, this is criminal activity.

This was a targeted enforcement action. And, you know, they arrested about a dozen individuals. Okay. What did DHS say about who they detained and why? DHS says they arrested more than a dozen people. Now, nine of them, they said, were undocumented immigrants per the agency, who some have some sort of criminal record. but it's unclear if they will be charged.

Another five people were arrested for protesting, for allegedly assaulting a federal officer or for blocking a driveway. You know, while this started as a raid, it very, very quickly escalated into this sort of spur of the moment protest. I mean, bystanders were recording what was happening on their phones. They were banging on police vehicles

and sort of an impromptu pushback of what ICE was doing. And officers were toggling in between detaining people on canal and then kind of taking them back to 26 federal plaza, which is immigration court, and then going back to canal to retain more people, and along the way they were encountering protesters, some people coming home from work, this was sort of right before rush hour, and things got really heated. I mean, federal agents brought out an armored vehicle.

Some were wearing military-style tactical gear. One officer even pointed a taser at the crowd. Oh, wow. Karen, can we take a step back here? because this raid comes less than a week after ICE arrested a couple of men outside a migrant shelter in Midtown. Talk to us about this political moment right now. That's right. I mean, federal officials said that the men they arrested outside the Roe Hotel in Midtown were part of a Venezuelan gang.

That's what they allege. And they said they wanted to restore law and order in the city. Now, up until really last week, immigration enforcement action in New York has really been confined to 26 federal plaza, right? this is where immigration proceedings happen. But we're starting to see it sort of trickle out and spill over with the incident at the row and now the raid on Canal Street. What are the city's political leaders saying about what happened? City Hall said it does not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement and was not involved. NYPD was not involved in this. And it's also reached the mayoral race, right? Cuomo and Mamdani both denounce the actions. Wals-Lewa said, you know,

the government should prioritize deporting people with criminal records. There was also a rally after the raid with a lot of elected officials and Comptroller Brad Lander, he said street vendors are not a national security threat. I mean, there has been a lot of tension building over ICE's role in New York City. You could really feel that on Tuesday. Yeah. That's WMYC's Karen. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks, Jane. Up next, a small neighborhood on the Brooklyn Queen's border that's been literally sinking for decades could finally get a fix. That's after the... break. There's a neighborhood in New York City that is famous for how little attention it gets. This little pocket of homes and vacant lots is known as the hole. It straddles the border of Brooklyn and Queens. But this week, Mayor Eric Adams says there's a plan to make things better. My colleague Sean Carlson sat down with WMYC's Parks and Sanitation reporter Liam Quigley for the latest. So Liam, for folks who are unfamiliar, what is in the hole and is there hope on the horizon for it?

Yeah, Sean, the full, it's one of those neighborhoods, like you just said. It's kind of half abandoned. It's a place that, you know, photographers will visit and kind of just revel in the decay over the years there. But people actually live there, and it's really not nice. It floods constantly, and there's no real connection to the sewer system. It's just like a place where the borders kind of defined by the elevation of the place, which is lower. than the surrounding neighborhood. And it's also known as the jewel streets,

because the streets, the streets named in the area are Roombie, Emerald, Amber, things like that. So there is a plan to change things. Hasn't that been talked about before? Yeah. And, you know, I joined the people who have lived there and who lived left there

in their skepticism, one did hear a big, you know, big city plan to change this neighborhood. But this time, Mayor and Eric Adams, and much of the officials, are saying that those are broken promises of the past and not what the future holds from the hole. They're saying, look, we've got 146 million bucks to work with. And this time, it's not going to be some hatchwork fixes here. So how exactly do you fix something that's below the rest of the surrounding area?

You've got to pick things up. I mean, this is, you know, it floods. You've got to clean out all this abandoned stops. like there's abandoned tow trucks, abandoned front and loaders I saw, there's straight cats running around. It can be nice in a way. But anyway, sorry, the city said, you can do that, raise things up, build a new sewer system that can actually handle a ton of rain.

All that comes in a big rezoning nearby in the surrounding area and here in the whole to really develop the area. and that could bring up to 5,000 homes. I got to say, Liam, this sounds like a lot of work, potentially years of work, but there are people living there now, so what about them? The city's gauging interests when the first time in buying people out, figuring out who might want to leave. That's new. That's new also.

Delisa Rodriguez is someone I talked to. She moved to the whole almost two decades ago. She's been dealing with these floods ever since. And even though she's standing with the mayor, kind of celebrating this plan, you can hear me talking to her here how hard it's been for her living in the hole for all these years. So just hopeful. They say that the last thing you lose is hope and hopeful to see, even if I don't stay, just to see the other residents that do stay, get what we deserve.

This is going to come down to whoever is mayor next. And you can kind of stand there wondering, was Eric Katins planning for this to be something he would really follow through on it and make this a big thing. But we're going to see, because this is going to be years before this is all done. That's WMYC's Liam Quigley in conversation with my colleague Sean Coulson. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.