Washington, DC, Police Chief Pamela Smith signed an government order Thursday permitting DC law enforcement officials to share details about individuals not of their custody with federal immigration enforcement companies akin to ICE — as President Donald Trump continues his federal takeover of regulation enforcement within the nation’s capital and crackdown on unlawful immigration.
Together with offering data in conditions like site visitors stops, the order additionally permits DC police to help federal regulation enforcement companies with transporting personnel and detainees.
Nevertheless, the order — citing DC regulation and police code of conduct — continues to ban officers from wanting by police databases solely for an individual’s immigration standing, from making inquiries about an individual’s immigration standing “for the aim of figuring out whether or not they have violated the civil immigration legal guidelines or for the aim of implementing civil immigration legal guidelines” and from arresting anybody primarily based solely on federal immigration warrants.
DC police additionally could not present any details about an individual in DC police’s custody or enable federal immigration enforcement brokers to query them.
“Underneath the President’s Government Order, MPD providers have been requested to help ICE with transportation of detainees and site visitors stops,” a DC police spokesperson stated in a press release to CNN. “In the present day’s order was meant to make clear however doesn’t change present MPD coverage and District regulation.”
CNN has reached out ICE for remark.
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s workplace declined to touch upon the police chief’s government order.
Bowser — who as soon as proudly touted the nation’s capital as a sanctuary metropolis — has shied away from describing town as such whereas she treads fastidiously amid a second Trump presidency. In Could, Bowser even proposed a repeal of the native regulation that prohibits town’s Division of Corrections from cooperating with federal immigration authorities “absent a judicial warrant or order issued by a federal decide.”
Trump on Thursday referred to as the police chief’s transfer “an awesome step.”
When requested by a reporter concerning the government order and whether or not he would require different cities to do the identical to keep away from a federal takeover, the president stated: “I’ve heard that. It simply occurred … That’s an awesome step in the event that they’re doing that. Yeah, I feel that’s going to occur everywhere in the nation. We wish to cease crime.”
White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt informed Fox Information on Thursday that 29 undocumented migrants “have been eliminated” from DC on Wednesday evening.
Division of Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday echoed the president, calling the manager order “a sport changer” and urging different cities to observe go well with.
“That’s what we want New York Metropolis to do. We’d like LA to try this. We’d like Chicago to try this,” Noem informed Fox Information. “We’d like all these different leaders to develop up and begin sharing this data on these criminals that shouldn’t be in our nation within the first place and ship them again dwelling to face the implications for his or her crimes.”
Late final week, Trump ordered additional federal law enforcement officers to Washington, DC, arguing that crime within the metropolis is rampant. Nevertheless, metropolis statistics present violent crime has dropped over the previous two years after peaking in 2023.
Trump escalated his efforts earlier this week by declaring a criminal offense emergency and federalizing DC’s police pressure, together with deploying the DC Nationwide Guard.
