U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has moved to rescind new guidelines issued by D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith to enable greater collaboration between local police and ICE agents as part of President Donald Trump’s urban crime crackdown.
On Thursday, an executive order from Smith said Metropolitan Police Department officers could assist ICE’s crackdown on undocumented migrants by “sharing information about persons not in MPD custody” and “providing transportation for federal immigration agency employees and detained subjects.”
However, it also stated that members “shall not make any inquiry through any database solely for the purpose of inquiring about an individual’s immigration status” and “shall not arrest individuals based solely on federal immigration warrants or detainers as long as there is no additional crime warrant or underlying offense for which the individual is subject to arrest.”
Bondi – who was handed ultimate responsibility for the MPD after Trump invoked Section 740 of the Home Rule Act on Monday to federalize D.C. law enforcement – has now moved to remove those instructions, clearing the way for officers to help ICE by searching databases and carrying out arrests after all.
However, a letter sent to Smith from District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb, posted to social media by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Thursday evening, argued that Bondi’s directives were not consistent with federal law.
“It is my opinion that the Bondi Order is unlawful, and that you are not legally obligated to follow it,” Schwalb told Smith, adding that police officers in the capital “must” continue to follow her orders “and not the order of any official not appointed by the mayor.”
Bondi also moved on Thursday to clear out the city’s homeless encampments and appoint Drug Enforcement Administration chief Terry Cole as D.C.’s new “emergency police commissioner.”
The upheaval comes after Trump took over D.C. law enforcement while insisting the nation’s capital city is overrun by violent street crime – despite the official statistics suggesting offenses are actually at a 30-year low. His opponents calling the move a “distraction” tactic.
The National Guard, alongside agents from the FBI, DEA, and Homeland Security, were dispatched to the streets of Washington to patrol its historic landmarks, including the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.
Their presence has not been entirely welcomed, however, with traffic stops in the northwest of the city greeted by protests from around 100 members of the public on Wednesday evening.
Some of the protesters chanted, “Go home, fascists!” while others held aloft signs that read, “Police checkpoint ahead” and “ICE,” to warn approaching drivers about the active checkpoint.
Mayor Bowser has also criticized the Trump administration’s actions, saying they illustrate precisely why she believes the district should be granted statehood and called them “an authoritarian push.”
