In late September, Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) stopped Jose Bonilla Lopez, a gardener who lived in the city’s northwest. According to a police report, it was a case of mistaken identity. Instead of releasing him, they turned him over to masked federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, who seized him as neighbors chanted for his freedom.
The next day, MPD stopped a car missing a rear license plate and arrested the driver. Mayker Enrique Salas-Araujo was a passenger in the vehicle. Instead of releasing him, police transferred him directly to a masked Homeland Security agent, who led him in his neon yellow construction jacket to an unmarked car outside of a school. According to a bystander, the handover frightened students, who asked if they would be taken next.
40 local organizations say MPD’s cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violates D.C.’s Sanctuary Values Amendment Act, which bars police from transferring individuals to federal immigration authorities unless they are awaiting trial or sentencing for a federal criminal charge or are serving a federal criminal sentence. Even after an executive order authorizing such cooperation expired in September, MPD continued the practice. Throughout this period, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser maintained that the department was no longer involved in immigration enforcement. After The Washington Post reported at least half a dozen such cases, Bowser admitted that local officers had continued to patrol with the Department of Homeland Security…