WASHINGTON—Residents of Washington, D.C., are upset and unhappy with Donald Trump’s ICE troops’ invasion, occupation, and deportations–and with their own officeholders’ cooperation with it. So a parade of 150 witnesses let the City Council know it in a day-long hearing on December 4.
They didn’t get much satisfaction, however, from the council members who attended.
Councilmember Brooke Pinto, D-2nd Ward, who chaired the session, explained the city’s hands are tied because Washington is really under federal control and subject to Trump’s edicts and his troops. Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D) gave lip service to witnesses’ complaints while pushing an unrelated piece of legislation.
And two targets of the speakers’ ire weren’t there: Pro-corporate Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) has cooperated—she says out of necessity—with Trump. That includes tearing up Black Lives Matter Plaza, the two-block-long stretch of 16th Street in front of the AFL-CIO headquarters.
And city Police Chief Pam Smith lets her Metropolitan Police Department cops collaborate with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents despite D.C.’s sanctuary city ordinance. Many witnesses demanded that the council officially call both Bowser and Smith to account.
Several witnesses, including Oliver Merino of the Immigrant Legal Center, added that Bowser is flatly lying when she says MPD is not cooperating with the Trump regime and its occupation. “We have conflicting and contradictory statements from the mayor about collaboration” with ICE, added Brianne Palmer of Legal Aid DC.
All the witnesses denounced right-wing GOP President Trump’s ICE agents and called for their ejection from the capital. Several added their presence and violent arrests not only scare people and make them go into hiding but also make them less willing to cooperate with any law enforcement personnel, including the MPD, in reporting crimes, for fear of being picked up, shackled, and deported.
That’s sent at least one organization, the D.C. chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, to court, Alicia Kass said. “We’re litigating a case showing the illegal actions MPD is undertaking” to cooperate with ICE, she said.
Witnesses told repeated tales of residents, all Black or brown, dragged out of cars, arrested in front of schools, nabbed while driving to work, or shackled in front of kids in local parks and then sent off for detention and deportation.
And they also faulted Pinto, Mendelson, Bowser, and other top officials for not speaking out forcefully against the occupation and Chief Smith for not using the tools MPD already has, including arresting ICE agents who break D.C. laws, to curb and end the occupation.
“Months into this occupation, your committee has not had a single hearing with the Metropolitan Police Department” and oversight of the agency, and Chief Smith chided Ashley Anderson, policy counsel of the D.C. Justice Lab. “What will you do to make our lives safer?…MPD’s collaboration will not make us safer.”
Thanks to Trump, the ICE agents now occupy D.C., plus 2,500 National Guards who “red state” governors have sent to D.C. to join the agents and the cops in ICE’s often-violent roundups and dragooning of anyone with brown skin. Their actions have drawn national attention.
D.C. is the second city Trump invaded, after Los Angeles, but unlike there and the third one—Chicago—there’s been little official resistance outside of the D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb’s office. The Republican response to his activism is legislation introduced to abolish the elected AG.
Black elected Democratic mayors run all three of the cities.
But on December 2, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled ICE’s warrantless arrests of anyone with brown skin are illegal. The only exceptions would be if officers “have probable cause to believe” the person they grab is illegally in the U.S. and would be likely to escape before ICE can get a warrant.
That’s the “arrest first, ask questions later” policy of ICE, one witness said.
Because he’s president, GOP Hispanic-hater Trump—not Bowser—has direct control over the D.C. National Guard. At one point, he planned to “federalize” the city’s police force and supersede Smith, too. He backed off on that, but Smith’s police are cooperating with his ICE forces and other enforcers, to the dismay and disgust of city residents.
Officially, D.C. is a “sanctuary city,” though Bowser tried to sneak a repeal of that through the council in her budget. On the ground, the witnesses said, it isn’t.
“I have a member,” whose name she kept anonymous for the woman’s protection, “who lost her husband while he was driving to work with his nephew,” said Laura DePinto, the D.C. chair of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
“They were stopped” by D.C. police, collaborating with ICE, “and taken to the ICE facility in Chantilly, Va. Both have been deported to Tamalpais, Mexico.
“His effects and his valuables were taken from him,” DePinto continued. “She was pregnant and miscarried. She’s lost her home, her stability, and her husband.”
“After Trump and Bowser collaborated, masked men with guns jump out of vans and snatch people off the streets,” said resident Robin Lipp. “In every case, they [the people grabbed] were not white.
“We want you to investigate the Metropolitan Police Department’s collaboration with the feds,” urged Marawi Arema of the D.C. Alliance Against Racism and Repression. “MPD Chief Pam Smith has lied.
“I was filming them arresting and profiling Black D.C. youngsters,” one day recently, Arema testified. Two colleagues accompanied her. “The next day, we were all arrested.”
While the hearing lasted all day, that won’t be the end of the issue. Far from it. Because 2026 is just around the corner, and it promises to be the biggest election year in D.C. in decades. Merino reminded the council members and the packed hearing room audience about the upcoming balloting.
That’s because Bowser announced days before, on social media without bothering with a press conference, that she will not seek re-election to a fourth four-year term. That throws the mayor’s race wide open.
“And some council members are running for Congress,” Merino pointed out. They are challenging Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the district’s non-voting congressional delegate. At 88, Norton is the oldest U.S. House member and has become increasingly silent and ineffective in recent years.
Even her friends, notably national Democratic Party heavyweight Donna Brazile, and former staffers are urging Norton to retire gracefully rather than seek an 18th two-year term.
That doesn’t satisfy Merino. “How can we expect transparency” on the issue of standing up to Trump “when they”—Bowser, Smith, Norton and the council members—“don’t do so now?” he asked.
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