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By Ella Fassler for Truthout/TheAppeal
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.
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 violated state law by sharing automated license plate reader data with ICE and Border Patrol. In Illinois, state police have been sharing some information from its gang database with ICE since 2008 despite a 2017 state law forbidding such data sharing. In New York City, the Department of Investigation has documented two violations of the city’s sanctuary laws. In one case, a New York City Police Department officer set up a system where he would be notified when a person of interest to federal immigration authorities interacted with the department. In another, a Department of Correction staffer who was part of a joint Homeland Security task force relayed sensitive information to ICE about two migrants in custody, unwittingly violating sanctuary laws, according to the report. In Chicago and Los Angeles, activists and some lawmakers report police assisting federal agents during immigration raids — though police claim they were only assisting with crowd control.
Truthout’s analysis of news coverage revealed that at least 18 jurisdictions allegedly unlawfully shared data and six may have illegally assisted with immigration-related arrests. None of the alleged violations were disclosed by police departments themselves. The public typically learned about them through bystander interventions or public records requests, indicating these violations may be a fraction of a widespread problem.
The pattern of collaboration reinforces a core abolitionist argument: that police departments are not neutral arbiters of the law, but political institutions with their own interests, norms, and value systems. In some cases, cooperation may stem from overlapping organizational ideologies, such as a shared commitment to enforcing social control through state-sanctioned violence. In others, loopholes persist because local ordinances fail to clearly define what constitutes “cooperation,” giving departments room to plausibly deny violations.
Individual politics also play a role. Many officers hold right-leaning political beliefs, which can increase their alignment with immigration enforcement priorities; in Adams County, Washington, for example, a sheriff who has repeated white nationalist talking points is being represented by a legal organization founded by Stephen Miller in a lawsuit alleging state sanctuary law violations brought by the Washington attorney general’s office. And in other cases, a lack of training may be to blame, as seen within the New York City Department of Correction. Together, these dynamics begin to explain why local police continue to bolster ICE operations illegally.
Even when abiding by “sanctuary” ordinances, the carceral system often acts as a “force multiplier” for ICE. Arrestees’ fingerprints are automatically sent to the FBI, which alerts ICE through federal databases. ICE may then issue detainer requests to local jails. Even if “sanctuary” cities deny these detainer requests, ICE can learn the individual’s location from information available to them in such databases. Courthouse proceedings, as matters of public record, indirectly assist ICE by allowing agents to track down and arrest people after criminal, family, immigration, or traffic court hearings.
As policing scholar Alex Vitale told Truthout, declarations of sanctuary are akin to political theatre. “They send a positive message — that local governments will not deny immigrants services,” he said. “But these pledges are a bit thin. They cannot in fact protect people from federal agents determined to pursue them, deny them services, and make them fearful.” Vitale pointed to legal indirect forms of cooperation, such as local police providing crowd control assistance during raids, and legal loopholes that allow police to turn over so-called “criminal aliens” directly to ICE, as examples of some policies’ limitations.
This close association between police and ICE is increasingly becoming a public relations problem for police departments.
“ICE is becoming a rogue police force with no accountability or transparency,” said William G. Lopez, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. “I frankly think the escalation of ICE violence has happened so fast that many police departments [that] formerly supported ICE are not going to do so forever and have not come forward to say anything yet.”
Some police departments have attempted to confront potential public relations issues head on. InSan Jose, California, Police Chief Paul Joseph has gone door to door distributing flyers assuring residents that local police are not involved with immigration enforcement. The department even released an AI-generated video of Joseph speaking Spanish to spread the message.
But Vitale said it’s misleading for police to claim that “sanctuary” laws will protect residents and their neighbors from deportation. Because ICE routinely mines FBI criminal databases, gang databases, and court records, even brief contact with the criminal legal system can put people at risk.
Slowing the Deportation Machine
Across the country, activists and some lawmakers have been pushing to slow down what some describe as the police-assisted deportation machine.
In Providence, Rhode Island, organizers successfully pushed for amendments to the Community-Police Relations Act after members of the Rhode Island Deportation Defense Network (DDN) released a video showing a Providence police officer calling for “Ivan,” a man ICE was seeking, to come downstairs. After he complied, ICE immediately arrested him.
The footage sparked rallies and drew condemnation from local organizations including ACLU Rhode Island. The Providence police chief later claimed his officers did not participate in or assist with enforcement actions, and were present only to ensure the “wellbeing” of everyone involved, an explanation organizers emphatically reject.
“The only people whose wellbeing the Providence police were looking out for was that of ICE,” said Kate Hao, an organizer with Rhode Island’s DDN and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
A civilian oversight body later concluded that the department violated a local ordinance and its own policies during the encounter by establishing a perimeter, providing crowd control, gathering intelligence, and coordinating tactical positions for ICE.
Lawmakers in Providence hope the amendments will clarify ambiguities around cooperation by defining what constitutes assisting ICE operations and strengthening enforcement mechanisms. In particular, the amendment clarifies that the Providence Police Department may not provide non-public information to ICE; forbids them from using any city money, personnel, or resources to assist in immigration-related arrests; and prohibits them from establishing traffic perimeters or controlling public areas to assist immigration enforcement. It expands the definition of protected spaces in the city to include charter schools. It also clarifies data sharing policies, stating that police cannot collect demographic data with city-operated surveillance technologies such as the Real-Time Crime Center or Flock cameras. All partner agencies accessing city-owned data must formally agree not to share it with federal immigration enforcement. And the changes allow civil rights, human rights, and youth organizations to take civil action against the city, department, and officers for violating the Community-Police Relations Act.
The Long Beach City Council in California similarly strengthened its ordinance in August, adding measures that prohibit federal agents from access non-public city grounds, creating a certificate program for businesses offering safe spaces to undocumented residents, and establishing penalties for city workers and contractors who do not comply with its policies.
After securing strong protections, Rhode Island-based organizers are now turning their attention to cutting off indirect forms of assistance, such as courthouse arrests carried out by ICE. In July, the DDN launched a petition demanding a virtual option for hearings, trials, and conferences.
“We see ICE vehicles outside the courthouse every week,” said Hao, “literally waiting in ambush to kidnap community members as they leave the building.”
The petition quickly gained traction, drawing thousands of signatures. That pressure helped push the Providence City Council to unanimously pass a resolution directing two city courts to accommodate remote-hearing requests. “Now our petition is demanding that the rest of Rhode Island does the same,” she said, noting that the state already has the infrastructure and protocols from the COVID-19 era to make such accommodations routine.
Hao situated these policy changes as just one piece of a much larger struggle to build working-class power. “We have to fight back by building the organized power of our communities to defend our neighbors,” she said, “and make it clear that we won’t allow ICE to tear apart our families, no matter what the police and politicians decide to do.”
Ella Fassler
Ella Fassler is an independent journalist based in New York City. Their work on community autonomy, labor, technology and the carceral system has been featured in Teen Vogue, The Boston Globe, The Nation, Vice, The Appeal, Slate, OneZero, Shadowproof, Mic, In These Times, The Counter and elsewhere. Twitter: @EllaFassler.
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