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Judges free Canal Street vendors arrested by ICE, question legality of raids
By
Arya Sundaram
Published Feb 19, 2026
Modified Feb 19, 2026
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Photo by Selçuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images
By
Arya Sundaram
Published Feb 19, 2026
Modified Feb 19, 2026
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At least three of the 10 West African immigrants arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in raids last fall on Canal Street in Lower Manhattan have been released by federal judges who argued the arrests were unlawful.
The released men are Serigne Diop and Mamdou Ndoye, who were among nine people arrested in an October raid by federal officers on Canal Street merchants, and Abdou Tall, who was arrested in a similar, smaller-scale raid about a month later. Department of Homeland Security officials said the arrests were part of “targeted” operations to crack down on the illegal sale of counterfeit goods.
At least four of the seven other vendors arrested in October are in ICE custody in New Jersey and Louisiana, according to the agency’s online detainee locator. Gothamist could not determine the locations or legal status of the remaining three. Immigration law experts say the mandated releases of Diop, Ndoye, and Tall raise concerns about the legality of the Canal Street raids and ICE’s arrest practices more broadly. Their cases are among thousands in the past year under President Donald Trump in which judges have ruled ICE unlawfully detained immigrants.
“ The court-ordered releases for these three individuals confirms what we all know, which is that federal law enforcement officers carried out illegal and unconstitutional roundups on the streets of Chinatown,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School.
A spokesperson for the DHS, which oversees ICE, stood by the arrests, which at the time generated widespread media attention and were the subject of spontaneous protests in opposition to the government action.
"Despite activist judges, President Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem will continue fighting for the arrest, detention, and removal of criminal illegal aliens who have no right to terrorize our communities," DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
The released men
Ndoye, 45, a Mali native who has lived in the United States for decades, had previously been detained in ICE custody in 2008. He was released on an order of supervision, which allowed him to remain in the country and free from detention if he followed certain rules.
Ndoye was arrested on the corner of Church and Canal streets in Lower Manhattan, according to court documents. He was unrepresented in his case, and his court materials were prepared by his wife, a U.S. citizen with whom he has seven children and owns a West African restaurant on Canal Street.
Ndoye wrote in court papers that he was delivering food when a large group of masked, armed officers surrounded him. The officers said they were with immigration enforcement and asked who he was, so he gave his name and date of birth, Ndoye said. One of the officers appeared to be searching on his own phone for Ndoye’s information, “but I do not think he found my information because I heard one of the officers tell him: ‘Take him anyway,” Ndoye said.
In Ndoye’s case, Manhattan District Judge Vernon S. Broderick wrote that ICE “failed to follow its own regulations” in “improperly” revoking Ndoye’s prior order of supervision. Broderick called the government's justification of Ndoye's arrest "cursory," saying that the government did not provide any warrant or indicate whether the agents had probable cause to arrest Ndoye, “whether he was the target in question, or whether the arrest was, in fact, anything more than 'happenstance,'" Broderick wrote.
Broderick also said the government failed to explain how they had identified Ndoye and why he specifically was arrested.
“Absent such procedures, the agency will be free to either engage in preplanned decisions to unlawfully detain individuals and then come up with post hoc rationalizations, or merely randomly stage ‘encounters’ without the intent to unlawfully detain individuals and then create post hoc rationalizations for these unlawful detentions,” Broderick wrote.
Ndoye was released on Feb. 5 with a GPS monitor, according to court documents. A week later, ICE summoned him for what the agency said would be a session to adjust the GPS monitoring device, and the agency detained him, according to court documents. Another lawsuit challenging his release remains pending in federal court.
Judges in the other two cases also flagged issues with the ICE arrests.
Tall is an asylum-seeker from Senegal who came to the United States in May 2023. He was arrested on the corner of Canal and Lafayette streets, after running four blocks away from ICE agents who tried to approach him, according to the declaration of an ICE officer submitted in court. On Dec. 23, Manhattan District Judge Arun Subramanian wrote a two-paragraph order mandating Tall's release.
”The shortness of this order suggests exasperation with how federal officers continue to abruptly sweep people off the streets for no reason at all,” Mukherjee said.
Diop, 19, from Senegal, had entered the United States in April 2023 as an unaccompanied minor, without a parent or legal guardian, and was granted Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, an immigration protection for children and young adults who can prove parental neglect.
New Jersey District Judge Karen M. Williams cited a judge’s decision in a similar case in her Dec. 29 order, saying that Diop’s arrest and detention were “blatantly unlawful from the start."
Lauren Rieff, the associate director of the New York Legal Assistance Group’s immigrant protection unit, said the releases of Tall, Ndoye and Diop show the government isn’t complying with its own regulations requiring individualized determinations for arrest.
“What it shows is that the government is not following the law in their detention decisions,” Rieff said. “This pattern of dragnet operations, of trying to arrest as many people as possible and leave them detained, is contrary to the law.”
A lawsuit challenging the detention of Modou Mboup, one of the men detained in Louisiana, is pending in federal district court in New Jersey. Federal judge Michael Farbiarz found in November that Mboup was being unlawfully detained because he was being denied bond, and ordered that Mboup receive a bond hearing.
This story was updated with a comment from DHS.
Tagged
Politics
immigration
manhattan
public safety
Arya Sundaram
Arya is a reporter covering race and justice. Got a tip? Email: [email protected] or reach Arya on Signal at 512-650-8767.
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