As President Donald Trump’s 30-day crime emergency came to an end last month, Mayor Muriel Bowser was emphatic: The Metropolitan Police Department would no longer be involved in immigration enforcement.
When The Washington Post documented clear evidence of at least half a dozen incidents, the mayor was forced to admit that Department of Homeland Security agencies (which include Homeland Security Investigations, Customs and Border Protection, and ICE) have continued to patrol with local officers as part of a federal task force.
“We want to get the Homeland Security agencies off of the task force. And I am working on that,” the mayor told a group of angry constituents last week.
As residents have struggled to understand what role D.C. police are playing in immigration enforcement, advocates and even some elected officials say that local lawmakers haven’t done enough to provide oversight and accountability.
“We heard from the mayor that ICE was no longer going to be working with MPD. That proved to be false,” says Oliver Merino, an organizer with the Colectivo de Familias Migrantes. “It was alarming we were hearing one thing from elected officials but in reality something else was happening on the ground. We are demanding a public hearing so these things come to light.”
The lack of clarity has continued as arrests have ticked up. As of last month, more than 1,400 people in D.C. had been picked up for immigration violations.
“We are literally ignoring the voices of the public in a very real way and we’re not doing our job as an oversight body,” said Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George. She argues that the D.C. Council’s failure to act – even just by holding a public hearing – runs the risk of making the city’s elected representatives look “complicit.”
According to a Washington Post poll conducted in mid-August, 71% of D.C. residents said that local police should not be assisting in federal immigration enforcement.
Earlier this year, Bowser quietly pushed to repeal the 2019 law that restricts how much city agencies can cooperate on federal immigration enforcement, but the council declined to pass it. Still, Police Chief Pamela Smith issued an order to officers during the federal surge clarifying that they could help immigration agents in limited circumstances, and after the surge ended, the mayor issued an indefinite executive order allowing D.C. police to generally continue coordination with federal law enforcement.
But it remains unclear to the general public what exactly MPD officers can and can’t do as it relates to immigration enforcement, or what instructions they have been given. Bowser’s office declined to answer questions from The 51st on the topic.
“People are feeling gaslit right now. I think the council should have a hearing,” said At-Large Councilmember Robert White, who this month also sent a letter to Bowser asking for more clarity on D.C.’s role in immigration enforcement, specifically near schools.
A group of more than 300 parents with kids at schools in wards 4 and 5 – where much of the immigration enforcement has been happening – are calling for the creation of a special council committee to “address kidnapping, disappearances, and unlawful or unaccountable law enforcement activity.”
Lewis George says that the council should do something, whether it’s holding a public roundtable to hear input from residents or an oversight hearing where Smith and other officials would have to clarify what MPD is doing.
“Not bringing the executive to the table to define what collaboration and coordination means and looks like is a disservice to our community, who have been very loudly saying, ‘We hear what you’re saying, but that’s not what’s happening in reality on the ground,’” she told the 51st.
The lack of oversight stands in contrast to how lawmakers have handled previous controversial policing issues. In 2018, after allegations that D.C. police were improperly stopping and frisking Black residents, the council held two hours-long public hearings – one in the Wilson Building where then police chief Peter Newsham was grilled by lawmakers, and another in Ward 7, where residents shared their own experiences.
Any public hearing or oversight of MPD would fall to Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, who chairs the council’s committee on public safety and has thus far declined to do so.
But at least one lawmaker says they plan to take action. Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau tells The 51st that she will hold a public roundtable on October 29 to explore possible human rights violations during the federal takeover of D.C.
“There’s been people coming into council asking, ‘When are we going to talk about this?’” she says. “Because my committee oversees the Office of Human Rights, I will have the opportunity to examine incidents that people bring forward and whether human rights violations have occurred. But there’s always more we can do.”
Pinto told the 51st that she finds any cooperation with ICE "disconcerting," but that oversight is happening – albeit outside of public view.
“When it comes to MPD, the oversight we are doing on issues we are hearing about is happening on a daily basis,” she said. “We are constantly in touch with MPD and raising these concerns and ensuring there are systems and processes in place, that they are following our laws, and are protecting D.C. residents.”
Is that enough? Merino said no, calling it “unsatisfactory.” But it also reflects a difficult new reality D.C. finds itself in when it comes to anything related to policing and public safety: Local officials don’t want to provoke Trump any further by seeming “soft” on crime.
“We want to be careful given the unique status of the District that we find the right balance between how we have effective law enforcement and our running the risk [of] how the president has reacted to Chicago and Portland,” Chairman Phil Mendelson told the 51st.
That careful calibration is not just happening on MPD’s cooperation with immigration enforcement. As I recently reported, the D.C. Council recently disappeared behind closed doors to salvage a bill that would extend a juvenile curfew instituted during the summer months through the fall. The council was on its way to rejecting the bill before last-minute negotiations out of public view resurrected it. (Doing so required a concession from Pinto: that she hold a public hearing on the curfew bill. That hearing is scheduled for October 30.)
Nadeau says the council shouldn’t avoid talking about these issues. “We are always under a microscope here, but that’s not a reason to shy away from tough conversation,” she says.
Pinto told me that her main goal is to “protect D.C. residents and make sure our most vulnerable residents are not victimized and traumatized by the administration and this immigration enforcement.” And maybe that happens best outside of public view.
But when I asked White about whether the council refusing to do what would otherwise be routine public oversight to avoid provoking Trump was a sustainable approach, he paused before answering.
“It is best if the council and the mayor are on the same page these days, but that page shouldn’t be out of step with what the people we represent are seeing,” he said. “And that’s the risk we run right now.”
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