President Donald Trump says he’s planning to expand his crackdown on crime, suggesting he may direct federal agents and troops to Chicago, Baltimore, or New Orleans. Any such campaign would follow nearly a month of an unprecedented federal intervention in the capital of the United States.
A lesson from Washington is that immigration enforcement is likely to play a central role alongside crime reduction efforts wherever the administration centers its attention next.
The cities President Trump has floated are led by Democrats and have raised the administration’s ire over their immigration policies. Chicago and New Orleans appear on a Department of Justice list of “sanctuary jurisdictions” that the administration says hinder enforcement of federal immigration laws. Baltimore showed up on an earlier version of that list. Attorney General Pam Bondi cited Washington’s sanctuary status as a reason for the federalization of the Police Department last month.
Why We Wrote This
As President Donald Trump considers intervening in additional U.S. cities to address crime, a takeaway from Washington is that immigration enforcement is at the forefront of the effort. That is drawing controversy among locals.
Threats “are multiplied by the District’s sanctuary city policies, which actively shield criminal aliens from the consequences required by federal law,” Ms. Bondi wrote in an Aug. 15 order, directing the Police Department to work with federal immigration officials. The order identified the high level of illegal immigration during the Biden administration as presenting “extreme public safety and national security risks.”
Early indicators from Washington show the significant but volatile results that Trump administration intervention can bring. The White House and D.C. Police Union tout an initial decline in violent crime. The Department of Homeland Security released a list of who it says are criminals and unauthorized immigrants arrested in the district. Among immigrant communities, however, fearful residents have retreated from public view, and businesses report slowdowns. Grassroots resistance to the intervention is surging – and federal agencies are having to take precautions for the safety of their own enforcement personnel.
Logistics around the collaboration between police and immigration officers remain “pretty murky,” says Doris Meissner, director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute.
“It does seem that the city – the mayor, the police chief, and so on – have simply decided to give over” to presidential authority, she says.
Yet if the city shows what a forced partnership can achieve, it also showcases ensuing controversies – visible on the streets and in court. Here’s an up-close look at how all that is going.
Immigration arrests have been left to targeted operations and roving patrols of federal law enforcement, some masked, on the streets – not to National Guard troops. And local police officers are more closely cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE’s top official reported about 480 arrests in the district over the first two weeks of the police takeover.
On Thursday, District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued Mr. Trump over the deployment of guard troops in the city. That follows a federal judge ruling in California on Sept. 2 that Mr. Trump’s use of troops in Los Angeles violated a law barring the military from domestic law enforcement duties.
How federal agents and D.C. police are partnering
Mr. Trump’s “crime emergency” executive order on Aug. 11 invoked a provision of the district’s Home Rule Act, and directed the U.S. attorney general to assume oversight of the police. The order is set to expire Sept. 10; Congress could vote to extend it, but likely won’t.
Based on that order, the administration initially sought to replace Pamela Smith, the police chief of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, with the head of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. A federal judge’s warning halted that plan.
Metropolitan Police Department policy prohibits officers from questioning people about immigration status, unless relevant to a criminal investigation. But in an Aug. 14 executive order, Chief Smith said the department could assist federal immigration authorities with information-sharing about individuals “not in MPD custody” – for example, at traffic stops.
Joint patrols and checkpoints with local police and federal agents have resulted in arrests, including of delivery drivers from Central and South America who are put into immigration detention, reports The Washington Post. The Police Department says it began scooter enforcement last year “in response to community complaints” about unsafe driving.
Another outcome of the federal intervention in Washington is that ICE personnel are riding in the same vehicles as local police “in some cases,” says Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
Border Patrol agents are also active. They “can make arrests for federal crimes committed in their presence or for any federal felony that they have probable cause to believe a person has committed,” says Rhonda Lawson, a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Those agents have been deputized by the U.S. Marshals Service for the D.C. operation, and they work closely with local police, she says.
Immigrant advocates in the D.C. area say local leaders have abused locals’ trust in the police. Anuscè Sanai, associate director of legal programs at the nonprofit Ayuda, says her organization typically advises immigrants to call 911 in dangerous situations, regardless of their legal status. “For the first time,” she says, “we find ourselves unsure as to what to say.”
Mr. Lyons of ICE recommends that immigrant victims of crimes continue to seek help. “We are not actively arresting victims,” he told the Monitor in an interview.
Separately, the administration has warned that all immigrants in the country illegally are subject to deportation – not just those deemed public safety or national security threats. Roughly 7 in 10 people in immigration detention do not have criminal convictions, according to ICE data.
Locals react to ICE
The enforcement actions are stirring opposition among residents who see the deportation program as cruel or unfair to people who may have been living and working in the country for years without committing violent crimes. Many street corners in Washington are papered with locals’ disdain for ICE. “Cowards! Losers! Thugs!” reads a poster with a cartoon masked ICE agent.
A hotline for ICE sightings is managed by the Migrant Solidarity for Mutual Aid Network, which also coordinates resources like food drop-offs for immigrants who fear leaving their homes. On a street in Columbia Heights, a tall tree bears a makeshift memorial for the Aug. 25 arrest of “Angel H.”
A financial analyst named Sarah, who like others interviewed asked that her last name not be published for security concerns, came out to the street to watch the arrest. People she believes were federal agents punched the man in the head to subdue him, she recalls. ICE has not answered a request to clarify what transpired.
“I think seeing something this violent is so violating that it will change your perspective on how the policing of illegal immigrants is taking place,” she says.
ICE, meanwhile, points to violence against its officers and agents. With an uptick in alleged assaults against federal law enforcement, ICE leadership says the agency is seeking safety in numbers.
“Instead of sending the normal four to five officers to go make the arrest on the street, we now have to double that number, because the arrest teams actually have to have security for what they’re doing,” Mr. Lyons says.
On the night of Aug. 27, a Monitor reporter saw four agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) – a component of ICE covering criminal investigations – appear to detain an individual on a residential street. None wore masks.
A tense crowd gathered to record the incident – one agent said they were also recording – as Metropolitan Police Department officers began to arrive. Onlookers asked about the reason for the detention. One of the HSI agents, who offered his badge number, said their actions were “normal law enforcement.”
“Nothing crazy going on in D.C. right now to make us stressed about you guys, right?” an onlooker responded.
As the federal and local law enforcement vehicles eventually drove away, the crowd shouted after the red and blue lights. “Shame! Shame! Shame!”
An incident report later reviewed by the Monitor says the police, who ultimately made the arrest, responded to a call to assist HSI based on a suspected “hand to hand narcotics transaction.” An unspecified amount of cocaine was seized, according to the report.
Proponents of the local-federal law enforcement cooperation say it’s long overdue.
“It was somewhat problematic that you had our federal capital city purporting to not cooperate in enforcing federal immigration law,” says Zack Smith, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
Outside the district’s unique jurisdiction, he says, the federal government can’t force state and local officials to enforce federal immigration law, but it can incentivize cooperation through access to funds.
A federal judge on Aug. 22 extended a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from withholding funding from sanctuary jurisdictions. The administration is appealing.
Economic impacts
Economic concerns are rising among immigrant communities in Washington.
Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor
Businesses run and patronized by immigrants in Columbia Heights say they’ve had fewer customers since the federal crackdown began. Many who live and shop here are Hispanic.
On a recent evening, Yajaira Carrillo sits outside her hair salon, unsure of what to do. Her clientele has dwindled, and she has rent to pay.
“I have my papers, thank God,” says the green-card holder. “But I’m exposed all the same.”
She left Venezuela before the pandemic, as “Food was difficult to find,” she says. Now, Ms. Carrillo worries for other Venezuelans living here without legal authorization.
Elsewhere, behind the counter of a small shop, a woman named Maira also says, “Sales have been low, very low,” for the past few weeks.
She fears deportation, but says she can’t afford to stop work. Maira has a toddler, born a U.S. citizen. She’s also wary of an upcoming immigration court date, given mounting news of courthouse arrests that critics say endanger due process. Still, Maira says she thinks she’ll go.
Between lunch and dinner service at a restaurant, Edin, who says he crossed into the U.S. illegally as a teenager years ago, also fears deportation. He essentially only ventures between work and home these days.
Edin says he’s on board with the crime crackdown; a friend was beaten on the street and “left almost dead.”
At the same time, he says the campaign is also “affecting us good people, who are working.”
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