As ICE increases presence in D.C., immigrants say they’re scared of calling local police

It was a seemingly innocuous sign written in Spanish and taped to the side of a bus shelter in Mt. Pleasant in mid-August. 

“Today D.C. police announced that they will start to cooperate with ICE,” it read. “They have already detained one person. Treat the police as if they were ICE agents! Don’t speak with them, don’t answer their questions, and keep your distance!”

Whether or not many people saw the sign is unknown, but the sentiment seems to be spreading. Immigrants, attorneys, and advocates in D.C. say that as federal immigration enforcement has dramatically ramped up in the city this month, creeping suspicions that MPD officers are cooperating with the efforts are making residents think twice about calling local police to report crimes they’ve witnessed – or been victims of.

“Sincerely, people don’t even want to call the police,” one Latina resident told The 51st, asking that her name not be published over concerns of her own status. “That has changed a lot.”

That, say attorneys and advocates, not only puts immigrant residents at risk – especially those who may be facing situations of domestic violence – but could also imperil the very public safety that President Trump said justified his federal surge of officers into the city this month. Residents may be less willing to come forward when they’ve witnessed a crime, or appear in court to testify once prosecutors pursue charges.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. D.C. long held itself up as a sanctuary city, where police wouldn’t ask about immigration status and would limit cooperation on federal immigration enforcement. But with Trump’s surge – and some acquiescence from local leaders – that now seems to be changing.

“For years, we have been telling our clients to report their crimes and to get the immigration relief they are eligible for when cooperating,” says Sandra Benavente, the advocacy manager for Ayuda, a legal and social services organization that works with immigrants who have been victims of crime. “This all upends those 50 years of work.”

A primer on ‘sanctuary’ cities

While the fight over so-called sanctuary jurisdictions – which Trump vehemently opposes – is somewhat recent, the debate over how and when local police should cooperate with immigration enforcement isn’t.

It dates back almost 15 years, when one of the early iterations was an Obama-era program known as Secure Communities, which shared fingerprints taken by local police departments with the Department of Homeland Security – which could then act to detain someone for possible deportation. 

While some city officials believed it was a valuable information-sharing tool that could help deport violent offenders, there were also concerns that arrests for minor offenses could trigger an immigration check – thus discouraging immigrants from reporting crimes they witnessed or had been victims of. “In the case of domestic violence, or if it is a minor misdemeanor case, there is a concern people will not come forward and report it,” said Cathy Lanier, then the chief of D.C.’s police department. (Roughly 15% of D.C.’s residents are foreign-born, with longstanding populations from El Salvador and Ethiopia. In 2019, an estimated 21,000 residents were undocumented.)

Then-mayor Vincent Gray spoke out against the Secure Communities program, saying that D.C. was “not going to go about being an immigration agency for the federal government.” In 2011, he signed an executive order forbidding police from inquiring about immigration status, reinforcing related orders by his predecessors. The following year, the D.C. Council passed legislation limiting the city’s cooperation with detainer requests – when federal immigration authorities asked local agencies to hold someone beyond when they should be released from custody. (The council bill mandated that only those charged with “dangerous” offenses be held, and only for an additional 24 hours.)

“We want people who are victims to report crime, and we want witnesses to report crime,” said Councilmember Phil Mendelson at the time.

That sentiment was shared by the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which in 2017 stated that “enforcement of routine civil immigration by police would undermine the trust and cooperation with immigrant communities which are essential elements of community oriented policing.”

The debate sprung back up in 2019 – during the tail end of the first Trump administration – when the council passed a bill strengthening the current law limiting cooperation on detainer requests. (The bill added a requirement for a warrant from a judge for any D.C. agency to comply with a request that some be held so they could be picked up by ICE.) Mayor Muriel Bowser – who had called D.C. a “proud sanctuary city” and provided grants to organizations offering legal assistance to immigrants – signed the bill into law.

Similar “sanctuary city” measures were enacted in liberal cities and jurisdictions across the country, from Arlington County to the state of California. 

Trump puts on pressure, and D.C. relents

When Trump took office in January, he immediately started threatening sanctuary jurisdictions across the country. D.C. didn’t escape notice, with House Republicans marshaling a bill that would repeal the city’s sanctuary law. 

Bowser, though, beat them to the punch: At the end of May, she quietly inserted a provision into her proposed budget that would have done the same. And she wanted to make sure the White House was aware: The day after her budget was unveiled, one of her senior aides emailed Orville Greene, chairman of a White House task force on D.C., a link to the proposed repeal. “Can you share the reasoning behind the change?” he quickly responded.

Bowser herself had been back and forth on whether D.C. was actually a sanctuary city. Earlier this year, she said it was “misleading to suggest to anyone that if you are violating immigration laws, that this is a place where you can violate immigration laws.” But in a letter she sent to Greene in April responding to a number of questions about D.C. policies and practices, Bowser defended how the city approached immigration.

“MPD has a critical job to make the District of Columbia safe for everyone,” she wrote. “MPD’s policy for more than two decades has been to not ask individuals about immigration status. As law enforcement, MPD knows that when there are groups who hesitate to report crime to the police, they often become targets for serious crime. Allowing that to flourish makes everyone in the city less safe.”

Ultimately, Bowser’s proposed repeal fell flat in the council. But the issue roared back to life this month, when Trump announced his federal surge in D.C., vowing to crack down on crime. Proponents of restricting immigration said that violent crime in the city was linked to illegal immigration (despite data showing that immigrants are not more likely to commit crimes), and questions immediately arose about whether and how MPD officers would be tasked with assisting in immigration enforcement.

An answer quickly came from D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith in mid-August, when she issued a narrow order saying that while the city’s sanctuary law remained in effect, officers could now assist with immigration checks of people not in custody. In practice, this became most evident with traffic checkpoints that MPD started setting up in the city – where local officers would check for traffic violations while ICE agents were free to check on immigration status. Furious immigration advocates called the order a “betrayal.” 

The legal status of the city’s overall sanctuary law remains in question. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued her own order requiring local cooperation on immigration enforcement regardless of the city’s law, but the city has asked a federal judge to clarify whether she can actually do that.

“The Trump administration can compel MPD to comply with requests for police services for federal purposes, but that does not mean the law is suspended,” says Julie Mao, the deputy director of Just Futures Law. “What we have here is a police force and federal agents that are operating on the ground and behaving as if it was, and that is very scary.”

Fear has increased

The legal uncertainties – and residents seeing MPD seemingly working with ICE and other federal agents – have left many immigrant residents in fear, says the Latina resident who spoke to The 51st.

“One now sees a police vehicle, and people hide. And that didn’t happen before. Before the police spoke with our children, they would talk to them about becoming police officers, and today if the kids see the police, they – just like their parents – will run and hide. And even the kids who aren’t at risk because they were born here, but they are scared to be left alone. They are scared their parents will be taken away,” she said.

Attorneys and advocates say the impact on public safety could be very real: Immigrants will be less likely to report crimes they witness, and even when they are victims of crimes themselves. This hesitation to call police is especially dangerous for immigrants experiencing domestic abuse, says Katie Parkinson, the social services manager for the Tahirih Justice Center, which works with survivors of violence and domestic abuse.

“Immigrant survivors and victims of crime will be less likely to call police for help, and many migrants are staying behind closed doors for fear of what will happen to them. For those victims and survivors who are experiencing ongoing abuse, their lives are literally at risk and it’s already so dangerous to come out to report what’s happening, especially in those types of situations,” she says. “It’s putting survivors in such extreme danger on top of what they’re already having to experience in their day-to-day lives.”

Parkinson says what has happened in Virginia – where Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an order mandating increased cooperation in immigration enforcement – could be a hint of what might come to pass in D.C. “One of my clients wanted to file for a protective order in Virginia. She was just too afraid to go to the courthouse. She wasn’t going to an ICE check-in, just the general district court. She was afraid to be anywhere near the courthouse,” she says.

The fear to report crimes to police because of possible cooperation with ICE could even imperil undocumented immigrants’ ability to gain legal status. Under existing immigration law, there are two visas – the T and U visas – that allow undocumented victims of crime or human trafficking to apply for legal status if they cooperate with police. But advocates say immigrants are now questioning whether to report crimes, even when doing so would legally allow them to legalize their status.

“We have evidence of our clients expressing fear over whether to submit their U visa certification, whether to report their crime or not,” says Benavente from Ayuda. “If folks aren’t willing to start the process and report the crime, many people across the DMV will lose access to a legal pathway that protects them from deportation.”

‘There is some work to do’

There’s little question that Bowser and D.C. officials have been put in a difficult situation. In trying to protect the city’s broader ability to govern itself, they have tried to hand Trump symbolic wins they thought would dissuade him and congressional Republicans from using their broad powers more aggressively in D.C. And no matter how much the city’s elected officials might protest, there’s nothing they can do to stop ICE from operating in the city. 

Bowser has criticized the use of masks by ICE agents, has said that she would rather federal agents only focus on violent crime, and on Thursday made her strongest statements to date when she said that “what has not worked during this period of time is ICE terrorizing communities, especially with masks and especially not having enough information on where people are.”

Immigrant advocates, though, still fault her for proposing the repeal of the city’s sanctuary law. And there has been recognition within the city’s leadership that their initial fear that aggressive immigration enforcement could damage MPD’s relations with immigrant communities is coming to pass.

“Clearly there is some hesitation with some of our community members,” said Chief Smith earlier this week. “We know there is some work to do once the surge ends. We need to make sure we are in our communities again.”

At the same time, Bowser called into question how significant the break in trust might be, saying that there’s been no decrease in calls for police service. Maybe not, says Mao, but the impact could be felt later. “For prosecutions to happen, you need witnesses,” she says.

And the impact of more aggressive tactics by federal law enforcement officers may not be limited to D.C.’s immigrant communities. “Within 11 days, that trust is gone,” said defense attorney Andrew Clarke during a meeting Thursday hosted by Ward 7 Councilmember Wendell Felder, referring more broadly to how many residents may now view MPD. 

That sentiment was shared earlier this week during a virtual meeting where Cesar, who is a U.S. citizen, shared his experience of being detained by a number of federal officers working with MPD, as he was driving his work vehicle to a job site. “I don’t know after this who in D.C. is feeling safe,” he told the crowd. (He did not share his last name due to privacy concerns.)

“The fact is, especially lately, when any police department announces its cooperation with immigration authorities, that gives community members the impression that no interaction with local police is safe,” says Parkinson. “And that includes reporting crimes or seeking help.”