wAshington DC’s only home-grown warehouse was busy with contractors and customers on Thursday mornings – but Hispanic day workers who usually gather under sparse trees in parking lots and wait for work are not found.
Two days ago, masked federal agents flocked to the scene and arrested several arrests, photographed by bystanders and posted on social media. Juwan Brooks, a store employee who witnessed the raid, said agents caught anyone whose Hispanic appeared.
“They asked no questions,” Brooks said. People traveled through the parking lot, got out, and even slept in the car – all of them were caught by agents, leaving behind the empty trucks that were eventually towed away.
“It’s so cool when Trump says it, but actually witnessed it firsthand? I don’t like it.” Day workers are “not bad guys” and he wonders what’s wrong with the kids of the men who were taken away.
Trump ordered federal agents and the National Guard to go to the streets of Washington, D.C. for four days to fight the wave of crime that city leaders say has not happened, and residents of the capital are accustomed to the presence of armed personnel nearby and the aggressive tactics they use.
Apart from the obvious immigration arrest at Home Depot, Brooks said it was the second raid he knew since Trump took office — federal agents were found setting barriers at busy intersections and patrolling communities throughout the city. Trump exercised a never-held clause in the law that governs the area taking over the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) for 30 days.
It is unclear how much difference the deployment makes in public safety. Last year, violent crime rates fell to 30-year lows, but in Washington, D.C., it is still more common than many cities with similar populations. The city has recorded two homicides since Trump appointed deployment officials on Monday, bringing the number of the year to 101.
“I just feel like this is too much of the federal over-the-country. I think it’s unnecessary and I think our MPD is doing a great job,” said Kevin Cataldo, neighborhood commissioner.
The White House said 800 National Guard will be on the city’s ground, as well as hundreds of federal officials from the Drug Enforcement Bureau, Border Patrol, the FBI and other agencies. An unarmed unit said Thursday afternoon that they were told not to talk to the press and that among visitors to the Lincoln Memorial, a national shopping mall known for crimes.
“What are they doing now? It’s just a force. I did it in Iraq,” said Kevin Davis, a 21-year-old veteran who visited the capital from El Paso, Texas. “When people see uniforms, they behave differently.”
More generally, federal agents appear in communities in the vast majority of democratic cities.
They began to arrive on weekends, and on Sunday night, the Justice Department employee was arrested Throwing sandwiches Among customs and border protection officials, they were later charged with felony assault on federal officials. Federal agents and police have been seen setting obstacles on the main roads recently and pulling the drivers to the main roads, protesters gathered to condemn them.
On Tuesday night, on 14th Street in Columbia Heights, the Northwest Washington region, the location of the city’s largest Hispanic population, police and federal agents (some covered their faces, some started to stop cars) said a local store manager who declined to be named. Soon after, dozens of people appeared to blame them.
“[Residents] He tried to tell them the people and neighbors who left the streets,” he told The Guardian. “They shouted ‘Don’t make people afraid, it’s a free country,’ why not make the community safe? ”, said the manager.
According to a video posted on social media, the scene was repeated a little Wednesday night in a mile south of 14th Street, where police and federal agents pulled the car in the car, locals hecked them and tried to warn the driver to stay away from the driver.
Georgetown undergraduate Owen Simon heard about agents found near Tony around campus and wondering what they were doing there. The robbery occasionally happens nearby, but Simon says he doesn’t pay much attention to those people as much as the agents do to foreign students or seemingly foreign students.
“No one wants to know that anyone can scalp anyone at any time,” he said. “I don’t think this move by the Trump administration is a way to fight crime. I think it’s about optics.”
Brooks had similar concerns about the Congressional Heights near southeast Washington where he lives while smoking in a family deportation parking lot. Crime is undoubtedly a problem, but the teenager is in crime, not his working-class neighbor.
“You let others catch up with this, too,” he said. “You let the staff live nearby, go to the store, and be picked up for a 16-year-old, 17-year-old child.
He added: “I understand the goals for the area, but you can’t really blame the people in the area who are trying to do better.”
Last weekend, he saw eight cars filled with federal agents, just as they wanted to be seen, and he had never seen a city police officer do so.
“What is this for?” he wanted to know. “It’s more of a threatening tactic.”
Joseph Gedeon contributed the report
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