Dozens of District residents spoke out at a public hearing before the D.C. Council on Wednesday about what they described as a continued collaboration between the city’s police department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
The neighbors told D.C. Council member Brianne Nadeau, who hosted the discussion, that what they’re seeing on city streets are human rights violations.
“I walk with my passport in hand,” said Nadia Salazar Sandi, a core organizer with Colectivo de Familias Migrantes, a human rights nonprofit in D.C. “I’m a parent and I can’t fathom being separated from my 3-year old. … My parents walk with a fear that I’ve never seen before, with passport copies in hand and a prayer that nothing will happen to anyone in our family.”
Last month marked the end of a 30-day cooperation between D.C. police and ICE agents. Mayor Muriel Bowser said then that officers would no longer be involved in immigration arrests.
But residents said it’s still happening.
“Every single day within one mile of the house where I was born and raised, 15 to 20 immigrants are snatched up by masked federal agents with no warrants and no due process,” said Tanya Golash-Boza, a professor of sociology at the University of California who studies immigration law enforcement.
“Our neighbors are being attacked. Families are living in terror. Children are losing their parents. And people are scared to leave their houses,” she said. “If we allow it to continue here, in the nation’s capital, what happens next?”
WTOP has reached out to Bowser’s office about the residents’ concerns. Her office did not comment on the issue.
Residents said D.C. police are arresting undocumented immigrants for minor infractions. Then, minutes later, ICE agents will arrive on the scene to arrest them.
“On the way to grab my morning coffee, about a dozen masked ICE agents were staging in the firehouse parking lot on the corner of 14th and Newton Street,” said D.C. resident Dante O’Hara. “The workers … on the same corner of the firehouse are absolutely terrified. One of their workers told me that she was afraid to walk her daughter to school in fear of being kidnapped in front of her daughter.”
O’Hara called for the city to follow the lead of Chicago, which recently set up “ICE-free zones.” It bans federal immigration agents from using city property and private businesses as staging areas to scope out suspected undocumented immigrants.
Residents are also asking the city for more legal services for immigrants and more data collected during arrests to track which agencies are on the scene.
Nadeau’s committee invited the D.C. Office of Human Rights, which handles cases involving human rights violations, to attend the meeting. She said the office turned down her request to join.
“If actions by our own agencies do not comply with D.C. law and human rights, we need to know and we need to make demands of the executive to put an end to those actions,” Nadeau said.
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