Washington, DC, Police Chief Pamela Smith signed an executive order Thursday allowing DC police officers to share information about people not in their custody with federal immigration enforcement agencies such as ICE — as President Donald Trump continues his federal takeover of law enforcement in the nation’s capital and crackdown on illegal immigration.
Along with providing information in situations like traffic stops, the order also allows DC police to assist federal law enforcement agencies with transporting personnel and detainees.
However, the order — citing DC law and police code of conduct — continues to prohibit officers from looking through police databases solely for a person’s immigration status, from making inquiries about a person’s immigration status “for the purpose of determining whether they have violated the civil immigration laws or for the purpose of enforcing civil immigration laws” and from arresting anyone based only on federal immigration warrants.
DC police also may not provide any information about a person in DC police’s custody or allow federal immigration enforcement agents to question them.
“Under the President’s Executive Order, MPD services have been requested to assist ICE with transportation of detainees and traffic stops,” a DC police spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “Today’s order was meant to clarify but does not change existing MPD policy and District law.”
CNN has reached out ICE for comment.
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office declined to comment on the police chief’s executive order.
Bowser — who once proudly touted the nation’s capital as a sanctuary city — has shied away from describing the city as such while she treads carefully amid a second Trump presidency. In May, Bowser even proposed a repeal of the local law that prohibits the city’s Department of Corrections from cooperating with federal immigration authorities “absent a judicial warrant or order issued by a federal judge.”
Trump on Thursday called the police chief’s move “a great step.”
When asked by a reporter about the executive order and whether he will require other cities to do the same to avoid a federal takeover, the president said: “I have heard that. It just happened … That’s a great step if they’re doing that. Yeah, I think that’s going to happen all over the country. We want to stop crime.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Thursday that 29 undocumented migrants “were removed” from DC on Wednesday night.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday echoed the president, calling the executive order “a game changer” and urging other cities to follow suit.
“That’s what we need New York City to do. We need LA to do that. We need Chicago to do that,” Noem told Fox News. “We need all these other leaders to grow up and start sharing this information on these criminals that shouldn’t be in our country in the first place and send them back home to face the consequences for their crimes.”
Late last week, Trump ordered additional federal law enforcement officers to Washington, DC, arguing that crime in the city is rampant. However, city statistics show violent crime has dropped over the past two years after peaking in 2023.
Trump escalated his efforts earlier this week by declaring a crime emergency and federalizing DC’s police force, along with deploying the DC National Guard.
