Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith issued an executive order Thursday allowing officers making traffic stops to notify federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents about undocumented immigrants they encounter, NBC Washington reported.
This is a departure from the police department's previous policy and will allow immigrants who have not been detained or charged with a crime to be reported to ICE for possible arrest and deportation.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has insisted that her city is not a sanctuary city because law enforcement there has cooperated with ICE in the past.
But the city has several pro-immigration policies on the books, including one that allows noncitizens to vote in local elections and another that limits cooperation with federal immigration agencies.
Representatives for Bowser's office, D.C. police and ICE did not immediately return a request for comment.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Thursday, President Donald Trump said the MPD executive order was a "great step."
"When they stop people, they find they’re illegal, they report them, they give them to us, etc., that’s a very positive thing," he said. "I have heard that it just happened. That’s a great step. That’s a great step, if they’re doing that. Yeah, I think this could happen all over the country. We want to stop crime."
Trump on Monday federalized D.C.'s police department and deployed 800 National Guard troops in an effort to crack down on crime in the district — even though crime rates in the city are at their lowest level in decades.
"Let me be crystal clear: Crime in D.C. is ending and ending today," U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday.
Part of Trump's action in Washington included mobilizing federal law enforcement officers, including those from ICE, to patrol the streets of Washington alongside Metropolitan Police Department officers.
While some of the ICE officers' activities in the city this week have included routine police activities not related to immigration enforcement, officers on Tuesday conducted a “targeted enforcement operation” to arrest immigrants in a Home Depot parking lot.
Since Trump took office in January for his second term, his administration has prioritized the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, a key campaign promise he made last year.
ICE officers have conducted raids this year in major cities across the U.S., including some that prompted mass protests in Los Angeles and across the country in June.
