Hell Gate reported on Saturday that the dozens of NYPD officers cleared a path for federal ICE agents on Saturday around Canal Street, but were thwarted by demonstrators who got there first. Still, police and ICE officers arrested and pepper-sprayed demonstrators — even managing to pepper spray fellow officers (see second video on IG here) — as unmarked vans of federal agents drove west past West Broadway and Canal.

(The image above is from the raids in October on the counterfeit vendors nearby.)

The Times reported that the incident started at 11a at the entrance to a garage on Centre and Hester, as federal agents arrived on foot. When their vans started to pull out of the garage, protestors blocked them with their bodies and mounds of garbage (easily accessible on the streets!).

The NYPD arrived after that, clearing the entrance to the garage by confronting the protestors.

The Times had a anonymous source that said Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch called Ricky Patel, the special agent in charge of New York’s Homeland Security Investigations office, to say that the raid was “’unacceptable’” and that such shows of force had put New Yorkers, federal agents and her officers in harm’s way.”

“It’s really despicable,” Councilman Christopher Marte told The Times. “It seems like the N.Y.P.D., specifically the Strategic Response Group, is working to clear the way for ICE agents to go out in our city to do arrests and put people in the process of deportation.”