A line of officers with helmets and shields entered City Hall Park shortly before 4 a.m. and forced out about 50 people, many of them homeless, who remained at the encampment. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the clearing of the encampment, which had about 100 people still there, was unrelated to President Donald Trump’s threats to send federal law enforcers to New York to take on protesters, as the president has done in Portland, Oregon.

The decision to clear what Blasio called the increasingly unruly camp was made at about 10 p.m. Tuesday.

“We do always respect the right to protest, but we have to think about health and safety first, and the health and safety issues were growing,” de Blasio said. “So it was time to take action.”

Speaking later in Albany, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he’d spoken to the president by phone, and Trump had told him he wouldn’t be deploying extra federal law enforcement forces to New York for now, and that the two leaders would speak first before any such action happened.