“This has only weakened our local communities and economy by disrupting our neighborhoods and their small business partners. All for politics. We don’t need any more of this disruption,” Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said at City Hall Thursday.

City Council members held a press conference Thursday denouncing ICE’s raid in lower Manhattan earlier this week. (Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit)

On Thursday morning, 11 City Council members and religious leaders rallied to condemn U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) use of military-style tactics to arrest street vendors in Chinatown.

“We began in unison to send a clear message to the Trump administration: hands off. Stop threatening our public safety and our economy,” Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said during a press conference in City Hall’s rotunda.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said 14 people were arrested in Tuesday’s sweep in Lower Manhattan, in which ICE agents—and an armored vehicle—descended upon a group of vendors selling bags and other goods on the sidewalk. Nine of those arrested were migrant men, while the others were demonstrators.

New Yorkers reacted immediately to the operation by taking to the streets, staging protests Tuesday night and the following day. Public condemnation from local leaders also hasn’t stopped, and the state’s Attorney General Letitia James asked New Yorkers to send photos or videos of Tuesday’s raid for her office to review, in order to assess whether any laws were broken.

The incident follows months of federal arrests at the city’s main immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza, and after the Trump administration sent National Guard troops into several other major cities this fall, including Chicago and Los Angeles.

During a Fox News interview Wednesday, ICE Director Todd Lyons warned that he plans to increase the number of arrests carried out in the city. Federal authorities called the Canal Street sweep an “intelligence-driven” operation, focused on the alleged sale of counterfeit goods in the tourist-heavy area.

But local advocates say it was a racially profiled operation against African migrants. The Street Vendor Project, an advocacy group, said that at least five street vendors were arrested on Tuesday. 

The sweep occurred just days after right-wing influencer Savanah Hernandez visited and posted a video of herself on Canal Street, tagging ICE’s account. “Hopefully ICE makes a trip over that way and starts mass deporting the illegals breaking the law,” she replied to a comment on social media site X. 

Canal Street has long been a hot spot for vending and a tourist location for shoppers of discounted imitation items. Since Mayor Eric Adams took office, the NYPD has ramped up enforcement against street vendors around the city, as City Limits previously reported. 

Referring to the arrests of vendors in the area, Speaker Adams said that these actions do not make the city safer. “In fact, it makes us all less safe. Trump’s ICE has repeatedly violated constitutional rights, unlawfully disappearing members of our communities and separating families,” she said. 

“This has only weakened our local communities and economy by disrupting our neighborhoods and their small business partners. All for politics. We don’t need any more of this disruption,” she added.

A few weeks before the incident, city lawmakers drafted legislation to update existing sanctuary city laws that have been in place for decades.

Councilwoman Tiffany Cabán introduced a bill that would make ICE’s exclusion from Rikers Island law, after Mayor Eric Adams’ administration sought to allow the federal immigration agency back at the island jail complex. The City Council ultimately stopped the move by suing and winning in court. Additionally, Cabán wants to expand the number of federal agencies with which municipal agencies cannot share information.

Tuesday’s operation in Chinatown included multiple federal agencies, including ICE, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

City Council Immigration Committee Chair Alexa Avilés said that it was unlikely that these reforms would pass this year, as the Council expects Mayor Adams to veto them. Therefore, it would be up to the next mayor to deal with them.

Curtis Sliwa, Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani. (City Limits, Flickr/Andrew Cuomo)

Mayoral candidates weigh in

The final debate with the three candidates for mayor, which aired Wednesday night, began with questions about Tuesday’s sweep on Canal Street. Each candidate criticized the deployment of federal agents in their own way.

Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor running as an Independent after losing the Democratic primary, said that the city doesn’t “need ICE to do quality of life crimes. We don’t need them to worry about illegal vendors. That’s a basic policing function for NYPD.”

Zohran Mamdani, Democratic candidate and front-runner in the race, criticized the Adams administration and called for an “end [to] the chapter of collaboration between City Hall and the federal government,” He also urged the Council to pass street vending reform bills aimed at protecting sellers from criminal enforcement.

Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, said that federal agents shouldn’t have stepped in, saying that “this is a matter that should have been left up to the NYPD.”

On Thursday, Avilés acknowledged that the city is limited in its ability to stop unexpected ICE raids, but said the state could step up and offer more protection.

State Sen. Andrew Gounardes recently introduced a bill to stop other states from sending their National Guard troops into New York without local permission. He said officials need to be “as creative as possible and do anything we can to protect ourselves in this moment.”

Gounardes said he’s frustrated and disappointed that state legislators have yet to pass the “New York for All” bill, which would limit cooperation between state and local government agencies and ICE. 

Outside the five boroughs, the number of local law enforcement agencies across the state that have struck partnerships with federal immigration officials has multiplied this year, as City Limits previously reported.

“I just think it’s only going to get worse. What we saw happen on Canal Street is just the beginning,” Gounardes said. “And so we need to be doing everything, I mean, everything we can to really protect New Yorkers and fight back.”

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Daniel@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org. Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post ‘Hands Off’: City Lawmakers Push Back Against Federal Agents in NYC appeared first on City Limits.

An Eagan man faces up to 30 years in prison for sneaking into a woman’s first-floor apartment and physically and sexually assaulting her.

Ricardo Roberto Mahkwah Diaz, 27, of Eagan, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Dakota County District Court to one count of first-degree criminal conduct in connection with the September 2023 attack. Two other counts will be dismissed at sentencing as part of plea agreement with the prosecution.

Ricardo Roberto Mahkwah Diaz (Courtesy of the Dakota County Sheriff’s Office)

A 34-year-old Eagan woman told police at a hospital that a man she didn’t know came into her bedroom and hit her head with a handgun and raped her, according to a police report and the criminal complaint. Diaz was arrested after police found him sleeping in her bed.

Prosecutors will seek a 30-year prison term based on the aggravated factor that the offense was committed at her home, where she had an expectation of privacy, the plea document said. The defense can ask for a term no less than 12 years.

Diaz remains jailed ahead of sentencing, which is scheduled for Feb. 5 before Judge Tanya O’Brien.

Minnesota court records show Diaz was civilly committed as mentally ill in January 2020, August 2021, July 2022 and June 2024. He was found to be mentally competent in November and entered his guilty plea a day before jury selection in a scheduled trial.

According to the police report and criminal complaint:

Eagan police were dispatched to Fairview Ridges Hospital in Burnsville around 6:15 a.m. Sept. 23, 2023, on a report of a sexual assault that occurred that morning. The woman had cuts and abrasions on her face and head and appeared to be in shock.

She told an officer she was watching videos and trying to fall asleep when a man, who police later identified as Diaz, came into her bedroom between 3:40 and 4 a.m. She asked him who he was and told him to get out.

Diaz said he was going to sexually assault her, then jumped on top of her. She struggled to get him off, but he pulled out a handgun and struck her repeatedly on the side of her head, hitting her harder after she began to scream.

The officer saw cuts on her hand and a possible broken finger “from using her hands to protect her head,” the complaint said. “(She) also had a bite mark on her neck.”

She said she continued to struggle with the attacker, who put all of his weight on her. He became angry when she turned away from looking at him while he sexually assaulted her, she told police.

She said she was afraid he was going to kill her “as he never attempted to hide his identity,” the complaint said. She told him to leave, but he refused. She was able to escape the apartment and drive to the hospital.

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Diaz was arrested around 7:30 a.m. when officers went to the woman’s apartment located west of Cedar Avenue and north of Cliff Road and found him sleeping in her bed. His hands were covered in blood, and he had no cuts or other injuries.

Officers recovered a handgun in the apartment that had been reported stolen this year in Robbinsdale.

Later, while at the police department, he declined to give a statement, but without prompting said, “I (expletive) up,” according to the complaint.

Police said they found no signs of forced entry to the home and they believed Diaz went through an unlocked patio door.

Most sexual assaults are committed by someone known to a victim; about 31 percent are perpetrated by a stranger, according to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network).

By ANDREW DALTON

The indictments announced Thursday of a poker cheating ring involving NBA figures and backed by the mafia emphasized their alleged high-tech cheating methods. But the con tactics they described are as old as poker itself, familiar from heist movies and James Bond films.

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Shady shuffles came not from quick-handed card sharks, but tricked-out machines. Instead of mirrors or guys in the corner peeking over shoulders, there were X-ray tables and high-tech contact lenses. Low-tech signals between players and old-fashioned beatings for debtors allegedly were used too.

Here’s a look at how the alleged fraudsters rigged the games, according to an unsealed indictment and the announcement from federal officials.

The poker

The underground games were illegal by their very existence, and operated by mafia families. So the indictments go out of their way to emphasize that these were extra illegal — as opposed to “straight” illegal games where at least the poker itself is legit. Texas Hold ’em was the poker they played, like most games these days. It involves very few cards — just five face-down public cards and two for each player. That potentially simplifies the scamming.

The victims and the ‘face cards’

Rich targets known as “fish” were brought in by the allure of playing for high stakes in posh secret spots in Manhattan with names like “The Lexington Avenue Game,” the indictment said. They were also attracted by the prospect of playing with pro athletes and coaches, including Portland Trail Blazers coach and Hall-of-Fame NBA player Chauncey Billups, who is expected to make his initial court appearance later Thursday. The operators called these “face cards.”

Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups watches from the sideline during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

Billups was charged with participating in a conspiracy to fix high-stakes card games tied to La Cosa Nostra organized crime families that cheated unsuspecting gamblers out of at least $7 million. Also charged was former NBA assistant coach and player Damon Jones.

Authorities gave no hints about the identity of the victims other than to say they were usually wealthy people who lost tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cheaters.

The “face cards” and everyone else at the table who was not a target was in on the scam.

The cheating tactics

The shuffling machine did most of the work. Using machines is common, but the advanced tech on these ones could determine the exact order of cards after a shuffle, and who was holding what once they were dealt. That information was transmitted wirelessly to someone off-site, who would send the identity of the player with the winning hand to the phone of a player at the table, known as “the quarterback.”

Then it got low-tech. The “quarterback” would use classic subtle signals like touching certain chips to pass the information to the fellow cheaters. They’d all bet accordingly.

The other cheating methods

The shuffling machine con was apparently the main tactic, but the conspirators supposedly tried other gadgetry, some of it similar to the tech used to identify players’ hands on poker telecasts. Authorities didn’t go into detail about them, but they included:

An X-ray table that could identify the face-down cards used in Texas Hold ’em from underneath.
Hidden cameras built into the trays that hold players’ chips that could identify cards.
Customized contact lenses and glasses that could detect special marks on cards.

The postgame

The cheating winners would share a percentage of their take with the game operators. The victims were often told to wire money to shell companies that laundered it. And the organizers sometimes used robbery, extortion and assault to get debtors to pay. Authorities said two game operators used their fists to extract payment from one cheated player.

Also charged was former NBA assistant coach and player Damon Jones, who stands accused of participating in a separate scheme of exploiting private information about players to win bets on NBA games.

Billups made an initial court appearance Thursday, and his lawyer declined comment outside. A message was left at a phone number and email address listed in public records for Jones.

By Kevin Hardy, Stateline.org

States are rushing to inform some residents who rely on food stamps that they will soon be forced to meet work requirements or lose their food assistance.

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Recent federal legislation ended exemptions to work requirements for older adults, homeless people, veterans and some rural residents, among others. A rapid timeline to put the changes into effect has sparked chaos in state agencies that must cut off access if residents don’t meet certain work, education or volunteer reporting requirements.

States are implementing these permanent changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — commonly called food stamps — amid the uncertainty of the federal government shutdown. The budget impasse could result in millions of Americans not getting their SNAP benefits next month if money runs out. But even before the shutdown, states were assessing the new work rules for food stamps — the first in a wave of cutbacks to the nation’s largest food assistance program required under President Donald Trump’s major tax and spending law enacted in July.

Known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the law mandates cuts to social service programs, including Medicaid and food stamps. In the coming years, the law will require states to pay a greater share of administering SNAP and could cause millions of Americans to lose benefits.

But states are currently confronting the end of exceptions to work requirements for older adults, homeless people, veterans and those recently living in foster care. Those could threaten benefits even for people who are working but who may struggle with the paperwork to prove they’re meeting the requirements, advocates say.

Under the new law, states have also lost funding for nutrition education programs, must end eligibility for noncitizens such as refugees and asylees, and will lose work requirement waivers for those living in areas with limited employment opportunities.

And the federal government wants those changes made quickly.

“They’ve given us a virtually nonexistent window — I’ll just describe it that way — in which to implement the changes, so we are working on them very quickly,” Andrea Barton Reeves, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Social Services, told lawmakers last week.

She said changing work requirements could threaten the benefits of tens of thousands of people in Connecticut.

“We do believe that if we cannot in some way either move them into another exemption category or they don’t meet the requirements, we have about 36,000 people in these new categories that are at risk of losing their SNAP benefit,” Barton Reeves told lawmakers.

The federal government issued guidance to states earlier this month saying several key changes to food stamps would need to be implemented by early November.

The Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit working to address poverty-related hunger, characterized that deadline as an “unreasonable” timeline for states.

In California, for example, the state previously had been approved for a waiver to work requirements through January 2026. But this month, USDA told states they had 30 days to terminate waivers issued under the previous guidelines. In California, the end of that waiver could affect benefits for an estimated 359,000 people.

Gina Plata-Nino, interim SNAP director at the Food Research & Action Center, said states must quickly train their social services workers on eligibility changes, communicate those changes to the public and deal with an onslaught of calls from people relying on the program.

“It’s incredibly complex,” she said.

Plata-Nino said implementation will be uneven: Some states are already in compliance with the changes, while others will phase them in as households go through regular eligibility reviews.

USDA and the White House did not respond to Stateline’s questions about the changes.

Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, have said the cuts would eliminate waste in the food assistance program. In a June news release, he characterized SNAP as a “bloated, inefficient program,” but said Americans who needed food assistance would still receive it.

“Democrats will scream ‘cuts,’ but what they’re really defending is a wasteful program that discourages work, mismanages billions, and traps people in dependency. Republicans are proud to defend commonsense welfare reform, fiscal sanity, and the dignity of work,” Johnson said in the release.

Rural residents

Changes to work requirements will prove especially burdensome for rural residents, who already disproportionately rely on SNAP. Job opportunities and transportation are often limited in rural areas, making work requirements especially difficult, according to Plata-Nino.

“None of these bills came with a job offer,” Plata-Nino said. “None of them came with additional funding to address the lack of transportation. Remote and rural areas don’t have public transportation — they don’t even have taxis or Ubers.”

With waivers, states previously could show USDA evidence that certain areas had limited job opportunities, thus exempting people from work requirements.

“Because it doesn’t make sense to punish SNAP participants for not being able to find a job when there are no jobs available, right?” said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the left-leaning Brookings Institution and the associate director of The Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative.

The legislation changed the criteria for proving weak labor markets to what Bauer characterized as an “utterly insane standard,” of showing unemployment rates above 10%. (The national unemployment rate was 4.3% in August, according to the most recently released figures by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

“The national economy during the Great Recession hit 10% in one month,” Bauer said. “Ten percent unemployment is a very, very high level. So they set this standard basically to end the waiver process.”

That change will not only affect recipients now but also will drastically impair the program’s ability to respond to recessions: Traditionally, SNAP has quickly helped people who lose their jobs. But the new law requires states to cover more costs, meaning they will be stretched even thinner during economic downturns when demand increases.

“Not only are these changes difficult to implement — and certainly at the speed that the administration is asking for — they could be devastating to the program, to residents who are in need in their states, and eventually SNAP may no longer be a national program because states will not be able to afford to participate,” Bauer said.

‘Widespread confusion’

Since July, Pennsylvania officials have been working to not only inform the public about the federal changes, but also to update information technology systems — a process that generally takes a minimum of 12 months.

“Strictly speaking from an IT perspective, we’re talking about massive systems that generate terabytes of data and are working with records for hundreds of thousands — and in the case of Pennsylvania, 2 million people,” said Hoa Pham, deputy secretary of the Office of Income Maintenance for the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services.

Pham said the timing of the federal legislation and lagging guidance from USDA was “simply not ideal.” But the state is doing its best to train thousands of employees on the changes and help affected recipients get into compliance by finding work, education or volunteer opportunities that meet federal guidelines.

The end of geographic waivers put the benefits of about 132,000 SNAP recipients at risk in Pennsylvania.

“It is difficult, it requires time, it requires planning, it requires money,” she told Stateline. “And I want to be super clear that H.R. 1 [the new law] delivered a ton of unfunded mandates to state agencies.”

Pennsylvania created a detailed webpage outlining the changes and will notify individuals if their eligibility is jeopardized in the coming months. Pham said those who depend on SNAP should make sure their contact information is up to date with both the department and the post office.

“As a state agency, we’re working very hard to make sure that people have accurate, factual information when it is most immediately necessary for them to know it,” she said.

States are implementing the SNAP changes even as the ongoing federal government shutdown might temporarily cost recipients their benefits.

New Hampshire leaders say they are days away from running out of food stamp funds. No new applications will be approved in Minnesota until the government is reopened, officials announced last week.

And the changes hit agencies already strained from staffing shortages and outdated software, said Brittany Christenson, the CEO of AidKit, a vendor that helps states administer SNAP and other public benefits.

“The result is widespread confusion among both administrators and beneficiaries, as states are tasked with integrating new compliance requirements while maintaining service continuity.

“The changes not only increase workloads for states, but they can lead to more errors and longer wait time or applicants,” Christenson said.

“Beneficiaries face a heightened risk of losing aid not because they are unwilling to work, but because they cannot meet new documentation or compliance requirements on time,” she said.

Slow trickle of changes

In Maine, the new work requirement rules are in place, but recipients have some time to meet the altered guidelines, the Portland Press Herald reported. The state estimates changes to work requirements could affect more than 40,000 recipients as soon as this fall.

The state’s Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to Stateline requests for comment. But advocates said food banks are already struggling to keep up with increased demand and decreased supply because of the high cost of food.

“They’re seeing huge increases in families and individuals showing up, needing groceries, needing food every month, some every week, and that’s before any of these cuts to SNAP have happened. So we’re really, we’re very worried,” said Anna Korsen, deputy director of Full Plates Full Potential, a nonprofit focused on ending childhood hunger in Maine.

More than 70% of Maine households receiving SNAP have at least one person working, Korsen said. While some recipients — including those who are caretakers for relatives — cannot work, many more who are employed will struggle to meet documentation requirements.

“They call them work requirements, but we’ve started calling them work reporting requirements, because we think that’s a more accurate way to portray what they are,” she said.

Alex Carter, policy advocate at the nonprofit legal aid organization Maine Equal Justice, said SNAP recipients will be affected on a rolling basis because of regular six-month eligibility reviews. For example, a 59-year-old who previously would have been exempt from the work requirement may not be notified until next month that their eligibility status is in jeopardy.

“So people are not going to be losing their benefits this month because of those changes, which I think is the thing that is hard to explain to people,” she said. “These things are happening, but we can’t tell people this will happen to you in October or this will happen to you in January. It’s different on a case-by-case basis.”

Carter said her organization is urging Mainers to ensure their contact information is correct with the state and to remain vigilant for official communications on SNAP.

While states are forced to implement the federal changes, Carter said they should emphasize they’re only the messengers. She said Congress and the president should be held responsible for the fallout when people begin losing benefits.

‘It’s very natural to think this is a state decision, or this is a departmental decision, and to direct your anger and your frustration there,” she said. “ … In this case, this is not a state decision. They are required by federal law to implement these work reporting changes.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.