On a December day when temperatures dipped below 20 degrees, Street Vendor Project staff walked along a busy commercial street in the Bronx, handing out “know your rights” information to vendors selling fruits and vegetables. Several vendors mentioned they were scared after watching videos of immigration raids across the city.
“We used to go around helping vendors apply for permits so they wouldn’t get fined,” said Eric Nava-Pérez, Street Vendor Project’s Spanish-speaking member organizer. “But now, we’re out here distributing immigration rights information.”
As he checked in with various vendors, he asked them if they’d seen any recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity and instructed them on when to use the whistles he was distributing. “Blow the whistles as loud as you can if you see la migra,” he said. “Contact us or stop by our office if you have any questions.”
The membership-based organization for street vendors has been traversing immigrant neighborhoods across the five boroughs more than ever over the past few months. Under the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration this year, ICE has made 7,488 arrests in New York. Street vendors have been increasingly targeted.
In late October, 14 people, both immigrants and protesters, were detained by agents in Manhattan’s Chinatown after a conservative influencer posted about a “huge group of African illegal immigrants” selling counterfeit goods. A second large-scale operation in lower Manhattan was thwarted in late November after 200 protesters blocked law enforcement vehicles from leaving their garages.
A Federal agent pulls out his taser as law enforcement conduct a raid on street vendors during rush hour on 21 October 2025 in New York City. Photograph: Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/Shutterstock
Advocates say that street vendors are particularly vulnerable to these immigration sweeps. Of the approximately 23,000 street vendors operating in New York City, 96% identified as immigrants, and 27% of mobile food vendors identified as undocumented.
With national guard troops storming cities like Los Angeles, Washington DC and Chicago over the past six months, and border patrol recently charging into New Orleans and North Carolina, many fear New York is next. While Trump pledged to work with mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani on key issues like housing and cost-of-living concerns during a recent White House visit, organizers on the ground are skeptical of a true alliance and have already witnessed an escalation in immigration raids.
Groups like Street Vendor Project and NYC Ice Watch, a community-led platform alerting neighborhoods about immigration raids, are training volunteers and canvassing the streets to prepare vendors for what could lie ahead.
“We’re expanding upon the systems that are already in place to keep vendors safe from NYPD and the Department of Sanitation Police,” said Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, the deputy director of the Street Vendor Project. “Vendors, for the most part, have been on their own. That’s part of why they’re some of the most vulnerable communities to immigration enforcement.”
Relying on word-of-mouth channels to mobilize
In late October, Carra, a volunteer with NYC Ice Watch who asked to use a pseudonym over safety concerns, saw on social media that ICE was detaining vendors on Canal Street in Chinatown. She alerted her husband, who was in the area. “He hopped off the subway, but it was too late,” she said. “Agents had already swept the street and were leaving the street in their vans.”
The next month’s attempted raid on Canal Street was a different story – organizers and everyday New Yorkers were prepared. Volunteers from different groups warned street vendors over multiple days that ICE would return. “Some listened to us, but not all of them left because they had to keep working,” said Javier, an NYC Ice Watch member, who also asked to go by a pseudonym over similar concerns.
On the day of the raid, protesters learned about the operation before it launched. Javier said that word spread quickly through their multiple social media channels. Protesters mobilized at a building where immigration agents were preparing to head downtown and blocked vehicles from leaving the garage. “ICE is a rogue agency, which means it’s a leaking ship,” he said.
Carra described the group’s communication methods as a game of telephone. “We tell someone, who tells someone, who tells someone,” she said. She named Reddit as a helpful channel where organizers can share information quickly throughout the boroughs. “We’re looking at social media, news, anything that we can use to our advantage,” she said. “There’s power in numbers, and now that people have seen we’ve successfully stopped abductions, I hope they can get out there too.”
The Street Vendor Project hands out ‘know your rights’ information to vendors in the Bronx, New York. Photograph: Iris Kim
This multi-channel neighborhood watch approach is what advocates are relying on to keep street vendors safe as threats continue to rise. Street Vendor Project’s staff and volunteers started distributing “know your rights” information and whistles to vendors in early November, after the first raid on Canal Street. They’ve also partnered with other organizations such as the New York Immigration Coalition to ask small-business owners if they can allow people to seek shelter in their stores during raids. Some business owners have been receptive to their requests, said the coalition.
The Street Vendor Project is also setting up additional programs, like “hire-a-vendor”, to support vendors who are out of work and afraid of the immigration raids. “Now, we’re reaching out to individuals who are having events or parties and want to hire a street vendor,” Kaufman-Gutierrez said. “It’s a great way for New Yorkers to directly support vendors.”
Overall, organizations have been learning by communicating with organizers in other cities, like the Street Vendors Association of Chicago, Community Power Collective and Inclusive Action.
“A lot of us came together to share strategies during the pandemic, and that’s happening again now,” Kaufman-Gutierrez said. “We’re looking at the different tactics that immigration enforcement has taken in different cities to create strategies to keep street vendors safe in New York.”
Targeting of street vendors is nothing new
Even before the ICE raids, New York street vendors had long been threatened with fines and sweeps by the New York police department and the sanitation department. Advocates have spent years pushing for the end of criminal penalties for street vendors and to lift the longtime cap on permits in the city. “Local laws have made it so that vendors exist in the regulatory shadows, even though they’re some of the most visible businesses,” Kaufman-Gutierrez said.
But the immigration raids are an added threat to these vendors. Margarita, a produce vendor who only gave her first name for fear of arrest, said that the videos from Canal Street upset her. “I’m scared,” she said. “But I can’t be paralyzed or dwell on fear. I have no choice but to work.”
The immigration raids have also meant that residents of mostly-immigrant neighborhoods have been spending less time outside. Nava-Pérez stopped by a street vendor who worried about the decline in customers. “Usually this time of year I make good business because people are buying things on their way home, staying inside, and cooking,” Osorio, who didn’t give his full name for safety reasons, said. “But this year we’ve seen less business overall.”
Meanwhile, organizers across the city are preparing for the possible deployment of national guard troops to New York City. Hands Off NYC, a coalition of over 200 faith leaders, unions and community groups, has been hosting “Know Your Rights” trainings across the city that draw over a thousand participants at a time. They’ve also planned “Weekends of Action”, including events this weekend, where dozens of neighborhood groups canvas the streets and reach out to their neighbors.
Hae-Lin Choi, co-founder of Hands Off NYC, said that they’ve been watching what’s happening in other cities and ramping up their trainings. “We need to start with the neighborhood, and connect people street by street, block by block, so that when raids happen to community members like our street vendors, we have a local rapid response structure,” she said.
Even though it’s the holiday season, they’ve seen an influx of volunteers who want to connect with their neighbors and communities during the Weekend of Action.
“It’s to the point where we can’t keep up with volunteer demand,” Choi said. “During this dark time, it’s heartening to see how community members want to step up and feel like they did something in this moment.”
