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NEW YORK: New York State’s attorney general on Wednesday urged the public to submit photos, videos and other documentation of federal immigration operations to her office for review, a day after a high-profile raid targeted Manhattan street vendors.
Attorney General Letitia James said her office would review footage and other information from operations shared through a “Federal Action Reporting Form,” saying in a statement that “every New Yorker has the right to live without fear or intimidation.”
President Donald Trump, a Republican, has launched an aggressive immigration crackdown in major US cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Wednesday that the Trump administration would send more than 100 federal agents to the city to ramp up enforcement, citing an unnamed source.
Protesters in the cities have used phones to record ICE operations, which critics say have employed racial profiling and swept up many immigrants with no criminal records. The immigration raid on New York City’s Canal Street, a prominent shopping area known for bargain prices and imitation goods, triggered pushback in the street from residents in the vicinity.
When asked for comment on James’ oversight effort, US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said it “looks like obstruction of justice.”
The new effort to record possible abuses by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and other federal agents is part of a broader resistance by Democrats. US Representative Robert Garcia, a Democrat based in Los Angeles, said on Monday that he and other Democrats would launch an online site to track the agency’s operations and urged the public to record ICE activity.
The Trump administration in March gutted the DHS offices charged with monitoring civil rights abuses as part of its government downsizing efforts.
The ICE monitoring effort by James, a longtime Trump foe, could further inflame political tensions with the White House. James, who brought a civil fraud case against Trump in 2022, was charged earlier this month with lying on a mortgage application, as the Trump administration stepped up its use of government power against his perceived political enemies.
DHS said Tuesday’s operation targeting Canal Street resulted in nine arrests of alleged immigration offenders from Mali, Senegal, Mauritania and Guinea, including some with prior criminal arrests. Four people were arrested for allegedly assaulting law enforcement and another for obstruction of justice, DHS said.
Democratic US Representative Dan Goldman, whose district includes Canal Street, said his office had helped secure the release of four US citizens detained by ICE.
“Dozens of masked federal agents stormed Lower Manhattan, roughing up protesters and indiscriminately arresting people,” Goldman said in statement.
The Canal Street raid came after at least two prominent pro-Trump influencers posted videos in recent weeks focusing on African immigrants selling goods along the busy thoroughfare. One of the influencers, Savanah Hernandez, said in an October 19 post on X that African immigrants without legal status were operating a black market there and urged ICE to visit the area and arrest the vendors.
“I don’t know that ICE officials saw my post,” Hernandez said in an email. “However, the White House has been very responsive to on the ground reporters who have utilized X to share their stories.”
The normally bustling street was largely empty of street vendors on Wednesday, a Reuters witness said.

LONDON: Twenty-five Palestinian students from the Gaza Strip who were awarded scholarships at British universities will lose their places for this year if they are not evacuated from the war-ravaged territory by the end of this week, university chiefs told the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer.

The students received fully funded places to study for undergraduate degrees, master’s and doctorates at Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol, Exeter, Glasgow, Sussex, and University College London.

However, they could lose their places if they are not included on lists for evacuations planned for Oct. 22 and 26 and remain stuck in Gaza, university chiefs warned Starmer in a letter.

Vice-chancellors, principals and presidents from the seven universities also criticized a government ban that prevents the Palestinian students from bringing dependents with them to the UK. They urged ministers to use their “powers of discretion” to allow families of students to settle in the country, The Independent newspaper reported on Wednesday.

They said Palestinian students face an “impossible choice” between the chance to attend a British university and leaving their families behind in a war zone. Only nine of the students would like to bring dependents, the newspaper reported.

Students pursuing a doctorate can begin their studies later, but the others might lose their places because the next evacuation lists will not be available for another month, the university officials said.

They praised the government for the assistance it provided for previous evacuations of scholarship students from Gaza, and its efforts to secure a ceasefire in the territory, and requested urgent updates on a timeline for the evacuation of the remaining students.

“We are increasingly concerned that some eligible students are yet to be called forwards for the evacuations next week, and a small number of students have been given the impossible choice to leave behind their children in order to take up their university places, including babies as young as three months old, or children where there is no other parent alive,” the officials wrote.

UNICEF plans to evacuate students and their families from Gaza through the Kerem Shalom border crossing on Oct. 26, pending approval from the UK’s Foreign Office.

Thirty-five British rabbis and bishops endorsed the call from university chiefs on Wednesday, saying that “compassion should not be hindered by bureaucracy.”