The raid on Canal Street on Tuesday was a deliberate show of force by immigration authorities who used the pretext of street crime to arrest undocumented people, attorneys told Gothamist.Dozens of federal agents from ICE and other law enforcement agencies fanned out on Canal Street Tuesday afternoon, at times clashing with protesters and arresting at least nine people.The Department of Homeland Security described the raid as an intelligence-driven enforcement targeting the counterfeit goods trade.But Amy Belsher, a supervising attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said public display of masked agents and military-like equipment was designed to shock New Yorkers. The raid appeared to follow a similar playbook to ICE actions in Chicago and other U.S. cities, where agents used the pretext of crime to enforce civil immigration, she added. Instead of building a criminal counterfeiting case, the agents targeted low-level offenders they say hawk fake goods on the street, added Stacey Van Malden, a longtime attorney who has litigated such cases in Chinatown.“If their goal is to stop counterfeiting, what they need to do is to stop the importation, which is somewhere else – it’s not on Canal Street,” Van Malden said. The raid Tuesday used the pretext of the counterfeit goods trade to enforce immigration, she said.It also represents a shift in executive branch policy, Van Malden said.“The executive branch policy used to be: ‘let’s get the counterfeiters off the streets, let’s make the big companies happy.’ Now their policy is: ‘let’s do these huge immigration raids and make the president happy,’” she said.In a statement, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, praised the operation.“ICE conducted a targeted, intelligence-driven enforcement operation on Canal Street in New York City, focused on criminal activity relating to selling counterfeit goods yesterday. ICE arrested nine illegal aliens with criminal histories, including robbery, burglary, domestic violence, assaulting law enforcement, counterfeiting, drug trafficking, drug possession, and forgery,” McLaughlin said.Belsher said that while ICE agents have been working in New York City and state for decades, Tuesday was one of the first large-scale shows of force by immigration authorities in the city.Belsher said the sweep was similar to actions conducted in Chicago and Los Angeles, which have sparked lawsuits over agents profiling people based on appearance and casting a wide net to detain people.“From what we understand, the people they arrested were arrested on the basis of the belief that they were here unlawfully,” she said. “The idea that this was based on criminal activity was completely pretextual, based on what we know now.”Belsher added that the profiling of people is the “connective tissue” to ICE raids that have happened in cities across the country.“They are just going into public places and seeing who looks like an immigrant,” she said. “That’s what we’ve been seeing in Chicago and Los Angeles.”Another common thread is that the immigration arrests are made without warrants, she said.At a press conference on Wednesday, Rep. Dan Goldman, a Democrat, said the operation was an effort by the Trump administration to incite violence in the city.“This is a militarized effort to incite tension, passion, and inflame the communities in New York City and elsewhere,” Goldman said. “And it is purely a pretext to incite violence, so that this administration can then say that it needs to bring in the military to stop violence that they have created.”On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James opened a portal for New Yorkers to submit videos and other documentation of federal immigration action in the state.“If you witnessed and documented ICE activity yesterday, I urge you to share that footage with my office,” James said in a statement. “We are committed to reviewing these reports and assessing any violations of law. No one should be subject to unlawful questioning, detention, or intimidation.”