Immigration Crackdown Intensifies in D.C. under Trump Order for Federal Control

WASHINGTON — Local leaders and advocates Thursday said that President Donald Trump’s decision to seize the District of Columbia’s 3,400-member police force and deploy 800 National Guard members is a continuation of his administration’s immigration crackdown.

Since the president’s decision Monday to invoke the district’s Home Rule Act, checkpoints are being set up in busy neighborhoods, bulldozers are clearing out tents of people experiencing homelessness and Republican governors are volunteering their own National Guard members to bolster the president’s federalization of the district’s 68 square miles.

Videos of masked law enforcement officers making Washingtonians step out of their cars and conducting arrests have been posted on social media by journalists, drawing concern over civil liberties.

While Trump’s control of the district’s police force ends in 28 days, he’s signaled he wants Congress to extend his authority to deter the “crime emergency.”

Advocates questioned the situation. “There does appear to be evidence that non (Metropolitan Police Department) federal authorities may have exceeded the lawful bounds at some of those traffic stops … and there will be accountability if the law is violated,” said Norm Eisen, the executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, a litigation organization that has challenged many of the Trump administration’s actions, in a call with reporters.

Trump predicts enforcement ‘all over the country’

The checkpoints have drawn backlash from district residents and local elected leaders.

In a statement, district Councilmember Brianne Nadeau criticized the immigration enforcement at checkpoints.

“Last night what would have been a routine MPD traffic safety operation was co-opted by federal law enforcement agents,” she said. “Agents who are not trained in D.C. law. Agents who do not know our community. Agents who were not seeking to address traffic safety but rather were interrogating drivers on their immigration status.”

Trump Thursday said that law enforcement using the checkpoints as immigration enforcement was “a great step.”

“I think that’s going to happen all over the country,” the president told reporters at the White House after signing a proclamation celebrating Social Security‘s 90th birthday. “We want to stop crime.”

Violent crime in the district is at a historic 30-year low, according to the Department of Justice.

Eisen called the checkpoints unlawful.

“They’re using it as an immigration control checkpoint,” he said. “That is illegal.”

Bulldozing camps for homeless people

Homeless camps across the district are also being cleared as part of the president’s directive.

Trump Wednesday signaled that he plans to send a request to Congress for “a relatively small amount of money” to make improvements to the district.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that if those people experiencing homelessness don’t agree to go to a shelter, they could face fines or jail.

“The homeless problem has ravaged the city,” Leavitt said. “Homeless individuals will be given the option to leave their encampment, to be taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services, and if they refuse, they will be susceptible to fines or to jail time.”

The district has faced a backlog in getting vouchers to those experiencing homelessness, according to Street Sense Media, a news outlet that focuses on reporting on homelessness in the district.

Local police to aid feds on immigration actions

The district’s police chief Thursday issued a new executive order allowing local police to aid federal officials in immigration enforcement for immigrants not in police custody.

The new order does not change the district’s law that prohibits local police from sharing information with federal immigration officials about people in police custody. It’s a policy for which Trump has criticized the city, calling it a “sanctuary city,” but the policy does not bar immigration enforcement.

Trump called Thursday’s executive order “a very positive thing,” especially at checkpoints in the district.

“When they stop people, they find they’re illegal, they report them, they give them to us,” he said.

Since taking office for a second term, the president has intertwined military involvement in immigration enforcement, such as sending thousands of troops to the southern border and deploying thousands of National Guard members to Los Angeles after protests sparked by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

More National Guard movements possible

Additionally, the Trump administration is evaluating plans to establish a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” composed of 600 National Guard members to remain on stand-by in order to be quickly deployed to any U.S. city undergoing a protest or other civil unrest within an hour, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

On Wednesday, in another new twist, Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said he’s prepared to send his National Guard members to the district. Lee added that U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll told him that the military might request states  send troops to the district for law enforcement.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally bars the use of the military for domestic law enforcement purposes.

While the president has stated he also wants to send in National Guard members to other cities – Baltimore, Chicago, New York City and Oakland – all heavily Democratic cities led by Black mayors, like he has done with the district, it can’t be replicated, said Abbe Lowell, a high-profile defense attorney.

“One thing that people need to remember about his assault on the District of Columbia, it is a very unique legal framework because of the Home Rule Act that gives him some ability to do something which he does not have in other states and cities where the governors still have some or the primary control over things like the National Guard,” said Lowell, who was with Eisen on the call with reporters.

A trial is underway this week challenging Trump’s move to federalize California National Guard members, in a suit filed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, after an appeals court temporarily upheld Trump’s move.

‘Racial undertones’ cited by Baltimore mayor

Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott said Trump’s singling out of those cities, including the district, can’t be ignored.

“Every city that he called out had a Black mayor, and we’re talking about Black-led cities,” he said on the call with Eisen and Lowell. “We cannot overstate the racial undertones here.”

Scott also criticized the Trump administration for pulling federal law enforcement officers – Drug Enforcement Agency, Homeland Security Investigations, FBI, Customs and Border Patrol – from their duties. Instead they are “patrolling neighbors of Washington DC, stopping residents and checking cars instead of doing their actual jobs,” Scott said.

“If the president really wants to help these cities continue to lower violence and crime, he could go back to sending agents to their actual agencies and having them help us work on gun trafficking, work on violent drug organizations, and not taking these agents off to work on this immigration brigade that he’s had them on,” Scott said.

He added that he’s working closely with Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore and “we’ll be prepared to take any legal and any other action that we need to take.”

Moore, who served in the U.S. Army, has criticized the president for calling in the National Guard to the district and raised concerns that service members do not have the same training as police officers.

Trump brushed those concerns off on Thursday.

“They’re trained in common sense,” the president said of National Guard members.

Emergencies

Eisen said Trump’s actions in the district are part of the president’s pattern of invoking “non-emergencies.”

On Inauguration Day, Trump declared a national emergency at the border, despite low levels of immigration.

In March, he invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime law only used three times previously.

Trump’s decision to declare a “crime emergency” in the district earlier this week came after a former U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, official was injured in an attempted carjacking incident around 3 a.m. Eastern near the Logan Circle neighborhood. Two Maryland teenagers were arrested on charges of unarmed carjacking in connection with the incident.

“Well, what he’s doing in the District of Columbia, including illegal traffic stops, what he’s doing is of a piece with that dictatorial approach,” Eisen said of the president.

by Ariana Figueroa, Virginia Mercury

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