NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch received advance notice from the Trump administration last month that ICE agents were about to conduct a controversial immigration enforcement raid along Canal Street in Manhattan, the Daily News has learned.
In response, sources say Tisch directed NYPD officers to stay away from the ICE agents as they bore down on the busy downtown thoroughfare and arrested nine allegedly undocumented street vendors — a chaotic operation that drew mass protests and marked one of the Trump administration’s most aggressive immigration crackdowns in the city to date.
Tisch, who has served as NYPD commissioner since Mayor Adams appointed her in November 2024, didn’t violate any sanctuary city laws by getting a heads up about the Oct. 21 operation or acting on that information.
In fact, an NYPD spokeswoman said Thursday that Tisch ordered officers to remain on the sidelines in order to comply with such laws, which bar the city from helping the feds with civil immigration enforcement, and, conversely, to also avoid any sort of standoff between ICE agents and city cops.
Still, the revelation that Tisch had advance knowledge of the Trump administration’s Canal St. raid could raise a number of complicated questions for Zohran Mamdani, the mayoral-elect who has said he wants to keep Tisch on as NYPD commissioner once he takes office Jan. 1.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist, has vowed to as mayor fight President Trump’s “mass deportation” agenda to try to stop detentions of undocumented New Yorkers not accused of serious crimes. On Wednesday, Mamdani even said he wants individual ICE agents to know that under his administration they will “be held accountable” legally if they violate any local laws.
When asked during last month’s second and final mayoral debate specifically what he would have done in response to the Canal St. raid if he was mayor, Mamdani called ICE a “reckless entity” that “cares little for the law” before adding: “What we need to be doing here in our city is to end the chapter of collaboration between City Hall and the federal government, which we’ve seen under Mayor Adams.”
Asked Thursday about Tisch’s communications with the feds before the Canal St. raid, Mamdani spokeswoman Dora Pekec said the mayoral-elect believes she acted appropriately and wishes she would do the same thing if a similar situation arises in the future, citing the need to not have the NYPD assist the feds in immigration enforcement.
But the fact that Tisch received word of the raid beforehand comes as she still reports to Adams, who has publicly committed to not publicly criticizing Trump and got his corruption indictment quashed by the president’s Department of Justice this past spring.
It’s unclear if the Trump administration would be inclined to provide that same type of advance notice to Tisch about any ICE activity if she’s police commissioner under Mamdani, who has been maligned by the president as “a communist.”
ICE spokespeople didn’t return requests for comment Thursday.
Trump has for months threatened to deploy the National Guard, in addition to ICE, to New York City in the event of a Mamdani mayoral election, saying his administration would need to “clean up” the city if he took over the reins at City Hall.
Tisch — who hasn’t yet said whether she will accept Mamdani’s offer to remain NYPD commissioner — found out about the Canal St. raid roughly four hours in advance of it playing out, with a federal law enforcement official in the Trump administration informing her of the plans in a private conversation, according to several sources familiar with the matter.
The NYPD spokeswoman confirmed “New York-based federal law enforcement partners” told Tisch of the raid before it happened.
Tisch then told the mayor’s office of what she had learned before also issuing the directive to NYPD personnel, the sources said.
NYPD officers stayed away from the ICE raid as ordered.
Later, the NYPD was on hand as a large group of protesters gathered that evening at 26 Federal Plaza, the federal immigration agency’s headquarters, where ICE transported those detained.
The NYPD spokeswoman said Tisch disclosed her advance knowledge of the Canal St. raid during a recent meeting with City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, Council Public Safety Committee Chairman Yusef Salaam and Council Immigration Committee Chairwoman Alexa Aviles.
Also in that meeting, the spokeswoman said Tisch told the speaker and the other Council members that the Canal St. incident was “a perfect example” of the “critical role” the NYPD is playing in ensuring public safety in the city in order to prevent the National Guard from being deployed to the five boroughs by Trump.
