NEW YORK (AP) — An immigration enforcement sweep targeting vendors on New York City’s famed Canal Street turned chaotic on Tuesday, as droves of bystanders and protesters surrounded federal agents and attempted to block them from carrying out the operation.

The confrontation between the agents and hundreds of angry New Yorkers took place along a busy commercial thoroughfare that has long been a hub of the city’s not-so-underground market for knock-off designer handbags, watches, perfumes and sunglasses as well as phones and other electronics.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said the agents were carrying out an enforcement operation against sellers of “counterfeit goods” when “rioters who were shouting obscenities, became violent and obstructed law enforcement dutie

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