Samy’s garage in Manhattan is usually empty in the afternoon, while the 30 food carts that park there are on city streets offering halal food, hot dogs, peanuts and Icees.
But that changed the week before President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Most of the carts remain inside now as owners and workers, the vast majority of them undocumented, sacrifice their incomes rather than risk potential run-ins with law enforcement that could drag them into deportation proceedings.
“Some vendors we work with are in their homes behind locked doors now, too scared to leave,” said Samy, the 34-year-old garage owner and second-generation New York City vendor. The immigrant from Egypt is an American citizen, but asked to be identified only by his first name out of fears that his business would be targeted for immigration enforcement.
“We can’t just keep the door open like before anymore. We always keep the gate closed and installed cameras to check on who’s knocking,” he continued. “Everybody is expecting a raid at any moment now, and it’s terrifying for most of us.”
Trump last week deputized thousands of additional federal law enforcement officers to carry out his deportation agenda as part of a wave of executive actions and orders to remove immigrants who he says have made the United States “like a garbage can for the world.” Many migrant parents have said they’re keeping their kids out of city schools as the new administration removed a long-standing guidance generally barring enforcement agents from ‘sensitive locations.”
The Trump Administration has said it’s targeting violent criminals, with Mayor Eric Adams stressing his support for those efforts.
NBC News, however, citing a “senior Trump official,” reported that just 52% of the 1,179 the people arrested by ICE on Sunday were considered “criminal arrests,” while the rest were offenders or people whose only criminal offense was crossing the border. That compares to 72% of ICE arrests last year under the Biden administration where the person had a criminal record.
A street vendor sells fresh produce in Brownsville, Brooklyn, Jan. 27, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
In this tense climate, street vendors who spoke with THE CITY say they worry that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will target vending hot spots for deportation sweeps.
Policing of the city’s vendors was already on the rise before Eric Adams’ post-election embrace of Trump, who has openly flirted with the idea of pardoning the mayor facing a corruption trial beginning in April. The NYPD issued 1,504 criminal summonses to street vendors between January and September 2024 — surpassing the 1,244 it gave out in all of 2023, according to the latest department data.
The NYPD did not respond to THE CITY’s questions about why criminal ticketing has increased. A spokesperson stated that, pursuant to city and state sanctuary laws, members of the department “are not permitted to engage in civil immigration enforcement, assist in any manner with civil immigration enforcement, or allow any Department resources to be used in connection with civil immigration enforcement.”
“At the same time,” the spokesperson continued, “members of service will not take any action that will interfere with or impede civil immigration enforcement undertaken by federal authorities.”
Ninety-six percent of New York City’s estimated 23,000 vendors were born outside of the United States, according to a recent survey, where 57% of food vendors said they were either undocumented (27%) or preferred not to answer (30%).
While Adams last week told immigrants that “it’s imperative that you go to school, use the hospital services, use the police services,” he’s also supported a proposal to repeal parts of to New York’s sanctuary city protections barring most cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, warned that migrant arrivals could “destroy New York City” and refused to publicly criticize Trump.
Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director of the nonprofit Street Vendor Project, called on the City Council to pass new laws to protect vendors, including one to repeal criminal liability for street vending and another to lift the city’s cap on vending licenses.
“So many city leaders are saying ‘Trump is doing this, and Trump is doing that, how awful,’ but take a look at the mirror and see what the policies that exist in the city right now are allowing,” she said — just hours after escorting a street vendor with a deportation order to criminal court for an unlicensed vending ticket.
That vendor’s ticket was dismissed, Kaufman-Gutierrez said, but Yasmine Farhang, director of advocacy for the non-profit legal aid organization Immigrant Defense Project, said that “any arrest or ticket, even where a case is dismissed, can be used as a negative factor resulting in deportation,” or otherwise impact other immigration proceedings such as asylum claims.
’Very Scared’
“Oh my god, you know, I am very scared,” said Lola, a 45-year-old street vendor who sells seasonal accessories on Junction Boulevard in Corona, Queens.
The Cuenca, Ecuador, native, who asked to be identified only by her first name, came to New York with her children four years ago and is now facing a deportation proceeding she says is the result of missing immigration paperwork.
Her weekly income plunged to about $150 from $600 because she no longer works seven days a week to try to avoid getting a criminal ticket, like those many of her colleagues have received, in Adams’ “Operation Restore Roosevelt” enforcement campaign.
“I don’t receive any public assistance,” said Lola, whose husband makes around $900 a week as a construction worker. “I don’t come here to be a public nuisance.”
Times Square vendor Maria Marta says NYPD officers have told her she can’t sell churros in Times Square, Feb. 1, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
But with the fear that any encounter with law enforcement could accelerate her deportation, “I’m really concerned because I heard what usually happens with underage children is that they’re either given away or they’re separated from their families.”
Across the East River in Times Square, Abdul, an undocumented migrant from Egypt, works as a cook on a licensed Halal truck. Since the presidential election, he said, he’s received five criminal tickets from the police — once because he was not visibly wearing his permit around his neck at the start of the shift, and another time for failing to wear gloves during a break.
“The more criminal tickets I get, the more I have to go to criminal court, and the more I’m worried they’re gonna catch me,” he said in Arabic through an interpreter from the Street Vendor Project. “I have a family I live with here, I can’t afford to take that risk and be deported.”
Abdul, the sole breadwinner for his family, used to work as an accountant at a government agency in Egypt, he said, but moved to New York with his wife, four children and mother about five years ago hoping for a freer and more dignified life.
“Sometimes I regret coming here without knowing what it really would be like,” Abdul said as he talked about the two-bedroom basement apartment his family shares.
“My wife and my family would get really upset, because I always talked to them about the American Dream and how this is a country of immigrants and how everyone has rights and protections — but they would just keep pushing back, and they’d say that it looks like it’s not the case anymore.”
‘Even My Bodega Guy Is Nervous’
Samy, for his part, is concerned that his own family’s American Dream may be slowly slipping away before his eyes.
He was 10 when his family came to New York from Egypt in 2000, overstaying their tourist visas, he recalled. His father started working as a food vendor, and Samy followed suit when he was 18, first with a hot dog cart and later with halal food. He married at 24, and later became a U.S. citizen.
His family constructed their Manhattan garage themselves in 2017, after finally saving up enough money. They did much of the construction work themselves, side by side with workers who were themselves immigrants from Egypt and Mexico, “folks who look like me and my family,” he recalled.
There are no food trucks in the garage; it’s only large enough to house carts. With his vendors staying home now, Samy said, his income is down 80%.
Licensed food trucks sit in a Midtown garage, Jan 27, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
“If things keep going at this rate for a couple of months and things don’t get better I might be forced to shut down and go out of business,” Samy said. “I’m gonna lose my business, my housing, and then we get in line for public assistance and shelter. I would be very desperate and all my family’s business that we’ve built for decades of hard work will vanish.”
Vending in New York City, he said, has never been as difficult and hostile in his memory than it is now.
“I got assaulted multiple times while I was working in the streets, faced violence before, but I’ve never been scared like this,” Samy said. “This level of fear and worry is something else. “The fear of losing everything is really something I’ve never thought I’d ever experience in this country.”
He’s far from the only one with that fear though, he said, as many vendors he knows worry that any minor infractions would put them at risk of deportation, or otherwise impact their asylum cases.
“I’m worried about everybody around me: relatives, friends, co-workers, my community and neighbors,” he said. “Even my bodega guy is nervous. Folks who I work with are nervous and stressed out about the future.”
Looking to that future, Samy asked: “if they target all immigrants, and snatch away immigrants and workers from everywhere, how this economy will survive? How businesses will stay open? How families will be supported and provided for?”
He answered his own question: “The whole economy of this city will be paralyzed. There’s no way there’s any logic in this!”
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