Whatever their appeal to tourists, vendors selling knockoff “luxury” items — Fauxlex watches, Goochi sunglasses, Birkain’t handbags — are pests for most New Yorkers.
They block sidewalks, harass pedestrians, peddle stolen goods and feed an air of lawlessness — and poach customers from tax- and rent-paying brick-and-mortar stores selling the real items.
On Canal Street as elsewhere these scammers congregate, local business owners routinely beg the NYPD to intervene in what quickly becomes an open-air drug market and/or nest of filth and violence.
But the state’s benighted “criminal-justice reforms,” and the many “let ’em loose” judges and prosecutors installed by various Democratic machines make it hard for policing alone to stamp out these blights.
So ICE did New York a big favor Tuesday when agents flooded “Hawker’s Highway,” arresting nine illegal-immigrant “street vendors.”
And they’re not just petty crooks: These criminals, ICE reports, have rap sheets that extend to counterfeiting, forgery, trafficking of drugs, robbery and assault.
Yet a mob, alerted to the raid on social media, quickly formed to “confront” the agents, banging on their vehicles and following them on foot down Lafayette Street, screaming in their faces and even assaulting them.
Local elected Democrats, whose hatred of President Donald Trump (and of law and order generally) leads them to defend the worst elements of American society, stampeded to pose in front of cameras and declare themselves in favor of obstructing law enforcement.
Ignoring New York City’s subordinate legal position, these officials pretend that “sanctuary” status bars the feds from enforcing the law here.
Councilwoman Shahana Hanif declared, “ICE needs to leave New York City”; her colleague Chi Ossé posted, “ICE GTFO of NYC.” Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso bragged, “ICE ain’t ready for NYC.”
City Comptroller Brad Lander urged New Yorkers to “say to ICE, ‘We don’t need you here, we don’t want you here,’” and to “patronize a street vendor.”
The taxpayer-funded New York Immigration Coalition, amplifying hard-left rhetoric, claimed “between 15-40 people were kidnapped on Canal Street.”
Huh? Arrest isn’t kidnapping; it’s law enforcement not law-breaking; this demented, incendiary framing encourages violence against federal cops.
Illegal migrants selling fake designer goods from blankets are not neighborly types, nor “doing jobs Americans don’t want.”
They’re criminals who’ve gravitated to low scams (and associated sleaze); complete social parasites.
ICE is here, lefties. Get used to it.