NEW YORK — The head of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency Wednesday warned New Yorkers to expect more Canal Street-style crackdowns as President Donald Trump expands his mass deportation push to New York City.

Acting Director Todd Lyons said ICE plans to dramatically expand its activities in the five boroughs after the chaotic raid Tuesday that targeted street vendors in one of lower Manhattan’s busiest shopping areas.

“You will see an increase in ICE arrests because there are so many criminal illegal aliens that have been released ... and especially are being harbored in New York City,” Lyons said in an interview with Fox News.

“You will see us making the criminal arrests to make New York safe again,” he added.

Trump himself has so far stayed quiet about the Canal Street raid, which was condemned by local elected officials as an effort to intimidate New Yorkers for opposing his crackdown on undocumented immigrants.

The Trump appointee insisted that the roundup of sidewalk vendors hawking knock-off luxe handbags and electronics was a meticulously planned law enforcement operation.

“This wasn’t just something that organically happened overnight and we decided to hit Canal Street,” Lyons said. “It’s not random, we’re not just pulling people off the street. There was a specific reason based on intelligence.”

Nine undocumented immigrants described as “violent” men with criminal records were swept up in the surprise raid on Canal Street in lower Manhattan, DHS officials said Wednesday.

The Department of Homeland Security on X said that the nine men, who mostly come from Mali and Senegal in Africa “have violent rap sheets” for charges that include robbery, burglary, assaulting law enforcement, counterfeiting, drug-trafficking and forgery.”

“New York’s Canal St. is safer,” DHS said in its post, which had the mugshots of all nine men they accuse of coming into the U.S. illegally. “Under President Trump and @Sec_Noem, criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”

At least five protesters were also arrested, officials said. An attorney with knowledge of the arrests said the protesters, the youngest of whom is 18, were being held at ICE headquarters at 26 Federal Plaza but have since all been released without charges “for now.”

The four protesters were accused of blocking ICE agents and throwing objects at the officers, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News.

The raid, McLaughlin said, was a “targeted, intelligence-driven enforcement operation” on the counterfeit goods being sold on Canal Street from Church Street to Lafayette Street, on the borders of SoHo, Tribeca and Chinatown.

ICE agents, many sporting masks or face coverings, shut down the area as they conducted a raid targeting illegal street vendors.

Their actions sparked widespread rebuke by New Yorkers, many of whom were recorded protesting the ICE agents as they went about detaining people.

A witness who did not give his name told the New York Daily News on that Tuesday there was a “spontaneous” resistance by passersby when the ICE agents started questioning people and making arrests. He added that, along with the vendors, some “white kids” who were sticking up for them were also taken into custody.

“The crowd erupted, it was spontaneous,” he said. “They surrounded their vehicles, they weren’t letting them leave. And then they arrested some Americans.”

A larger protest was held outside 26 Federal Plaza, where the nine undocumented immigrants were taken to for processing.

“During this law enforcement operation, rioters who were shouting obscenities, became violent and obstructed law enforcement duties, including blocking vehicles and assaulting law enforcement,” McLaughlin said in a statement.

Sean Sweeney of the SoHo Alliance, a local community group, said the raid didn’t come as a surprise because residents have been concerned about the vendors increasingly taking up space on the sidewalk and selling counterfeit goods.

“The guys who were selling the counterfeit merchandise, it was centered on Canal and Broadway, and they were there for quite a few years,” Sweeney said.

“People complained, but it was contained and it didn’t spread. For the last six months, for some reason, it has spread east all the way to Mulberry Street.”

The New York Immigration Coalition in a statement Tuesday called the raid a “horrifying display of federal overreach.”

“ICE has no place in New York City, especially not in the heart of Chinatown, terrorizing our immigrant neighbors with military vehicles and masked agents,” Democratic local Councilman Christopher Marte said Tuesday. “This kind of escalation is unnecessary, unacceptable and antithetical to our city’s values as a sanctuary for all people.”

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