The US Department of Homeland Security proudly announced that it had caught a number of people it referred to as “illegal aliens” during Tuesday’s raid in Chinatown — one that drew the voiceferous wrath of New Yorkers who recorded the spectacle.

DHS said the operation was “a targeted, intelligence-driven enforcement operation” by ICE and its federal partners to take down a number of street vendors on Canal Street, with a focus “on criminal activity relating to selling counterfeit goods.”

Never before have we recalled the last time the federal government sent heavily armed officers in armored vehicles down Canal Street to bust merchants of counterfeit merchandise. It was the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to swat a fly.

Such raids are usually left to the NYPD, which does not operate

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