Police in Many “Sanctuary Cities” Have Repeatedly Collaborated With ICE |
Truthout’s December fundraiser is our most important of the year and will determine the scale of work we will be able to do in 2026. Please support us with a tax-deductible donation today.
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.
More than 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.
Truthout’s review of news coverage indicates that cooperation between ICE and local police in the district is among the most entrenched in the country.
The alleged violations reviewed by Truthout generally fall into two categories: illegal data sharing and assistance with immigration-related arrests.
But D.C. is not an isolated case: Police across the country face serious allegations of violating laws meant to protect immigrants. Truthout’s analysis found credible allegations in many of the largest U.S. cities with ordinances and laws meant to limit cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE, as well as in smaller jurisdictions from Providence, Rhode Island, and Rochester, New York, to Springfield, Oregon, Adams County, Washington, Loveland County, Colorado, and Mesa County, Colorado. In other cities, legal loopholes allow police and federal immigration authorities to collaborate without breaking similar protective laws. Philadelphia’s ordinance, for instance, restricts police from complying with ICE detainer requests, but does not limit transfers of migrants through other channels. Philadelphia officers have twice — potentially legally — escorted men to federal immigration authorities at courthouses, drawing condemnation from local activists.
The alleged violations reviewed by Truthout generally fall into two categories: illegal data sharing and assistance with immigration-related arrests.
In California, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego law enforcement allegedly