‘This doesn’t even look like it’s in America, but it’s Canal Street in New York City’…
There’s a stretch of Lower Manhattan that doesn’t feel like it belongs to the country it sits in. Walk down Canal Street and you’ll find rows of vendors hawking counterfeit handbags, knockoff watches, and stolen merchandise out in the open — an illegal open-air bazaar operating in broad daylight just blocks from City Hall. As one viral clip making the rounds points out, this isn’t some hidden corner of the city; it’s one of New York’s most famous streets, and it’s been effectively annexed by foreign nationals who police the turf as if they hold the deed to it.
Wall Street Apes:
This doesn’t even look like it’s in America, but it’s Canal Street in New York City
Here illegal foreigners sell stolen and counterfeit goods
If you’re an American citizen and try to do the same thing, they get very territorial and make you leave
Nick Shirley actually investigated this area and proved they were illegals and they didn’t allow American citizens to setup their own shops
The area is strictly controlled by illegals claiming Americans roads as their own
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani allows this and so did the previous Democrat mayors
Rules are only for Americans. Illegals can do whatever they want
This doesn’t even look like it’s in America, but it’s Canal Street in New York City
Here illegal foreigners sell stolen and counterfeit goods
If you’re an American citizen and try to do the same thing, they get very territorial and make you leave
Nick Shirley actually… pic.twitter.com/ENRWUeLqG4
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 27, 2026
In October 2025, ICE ran a targeted operation on Canal Street and took nine men into custody — nationals of Senegal, Guinea, Mali, and Mauritania, several with criminal records including robbery and burglary, according to CBS News.
The occasional sweep makes for good photos, but the city’s real trajectory has run the other way for years. De Blasio handed enforcement to a “consumer protection” office told to “educate” first, and the City Council spent years pushing to decriminalize street vending outright — held back mainly by Eric Adams, who vetoedone such bill. Nobody in charge was seriously trying to shut this down. They were trying to legalize it.
Now Zohran Mamdani holds the keys to City Hall, and he’s made his priorities clear. He branded the federal crackdown a “reckless” raid on “immigrant street vendors,” vowed to end New York’s cooperation with the feds, and warned that ICE agents enforcing the law in his city will be “held accountable.” He pushed throughthe decriminalization of unlicensed street vending that was vetoed by Eric Adams, replacing criminal penalties with a slap on the wrist, and installed the city’s leading vendor-advocacy activist as his official vendor czar.
The message to the counterfeit racket couldn’t be plainer: the cavalry isn’t coming. An American citizen who tried to run the same operation would be shut down on day one — but the people who’ve claimed Canal Street as their own have an Indian Muslim mayor from Africa who calls the agents who came after them the real criminals. In Mamdani’s New York, the rules are for citizens. Everyone else does as they please.
https://revolver.news/2026/06/canal-street-new-york-city/