A man stopped by D.C. police earlier this month for driving a moped on the sidewalk was then detained by masked immigration agents, a bystander’s video shows, an incident that prompted renewed questions about the city’s role in the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration operations.
The man is the latest to be stopped by city police for a nonviolent traffic infraction, then end up in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, even as D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) says she is working to end D.C. police patrols with Department of Homeland Security agencies. Immigration authorities say that the man, who is from Venezuela, entered the country illegally two years ago and that a judge had signed a deportation order.
The arrest comes as some D.C. residents have expressed mounting frustration with city officials for not extricating the local police department from President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda. Bowser has repeatedly said D.C. police are not patrolling with ICE but has acknowledged that Homeland Security agents who enforce immigration laws are working on task forces alongside D.C. police.
“We know the mayor has to walk a very thin line because of the president’s attention on immigration, and I don’t claim that’s an easy line to walk,” said Tom Donohue, an advisory neighborhood commissioner who witnessed the arrest. “However, she also needs to stick up for our residents.”
Or, Donohue said, “at least inform our residents on what’s happening and how involved” D.C. police are with immigration authorities.
Donahue was walking around his Southwest Washington neighborhood Nov. 8, scanning for streetlight outages or potholes as part of his usual rounds. He encountered a swarm of law enforcement — including D.C. police and personnel from the FBI, DHS and ICE — and began broadcasting live video on Facebook.
He filmed as more than 10 law enforcement officers, many of them wearing masks and baseball caps, helped put the man in an unmarked car. Others stood nearby.
The man struggled, screaming for help in Spanish. At one point he locked eyes with Donohue and said, “Amigo, avísale a mi familia.”
“I don’t speak Spanish, but you could hear it in his voice that he was pleading,” Donohue said.
Days later, Donohue learned the translation: “Friend, tell my family.”
‘We work with ICE’
Bowser and other local leaders have distinguished between Justice Department and DHS agencies, praising the partnership with agencies such as the FBI and criticizing the inclusion of DHS agencies in the joint task forces aimed at deterring crime. But any federal law enforcement officer from any agency can enforce federal immigration law in the District.
A D.C. police lieutenant last week further muddled public understanding of the department’s relationship with ICE.
“We work with ICE,” the lieutenant said during a neighborhood meeting before backtracking, according to a recording of the meeting reviewed by The Washington Post. He reversed course in another neighborhood meeting Wednesday, saying that ICE are not part of the “caravans” of federal law enforcement patrolling the city with D.C. police, but that agents with Homeland Security Investigations (an arm of ICE) are.
“ICE, HSI and the Homeland Security agencies work under the direction of Secretary Noem,” Bowser said Wednesday when asked about the latest arrest captured on video, referencing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem. “Our intent is that they are not part of the task force, the federal task force that we work with. It will be the decision of the federal government to separate them and to separate them as soon as possible.”
The Nov. 8 incident began when officers stopped the man for having a moped on the sidewalk in the 2200 block of Minnesota Avenue SW and gave him a ticket, a D.C. police spokesperson said. Then Homeland Security agents took the man, identified as Jose Antonio Sanchez Matute, into custody for a civil immigration matter.
Another bystander tried to “interfere with the arrest,” the spokesperson said, and D.C. police arrested him.
A Homeland Security spokesperson said agents made the arrest while “supporting our law enforcement partners.” In a statement, the spokesperson said that Matute illegally entered the United States in December 2023 and that an immigration judge ordered him removed after he failed to appear for an immigration hearing. The ICE online detainee locator confirms Matute is in custody but does not say where.
It marks the third incident captured on video in recent months in which city police stopped someone, then federal authorities patrolling alongside D.C. police detained the person.
The Post previously reported that, on Sept. 24, D.C. police officers stopped Jose Bonilla Lopez in the 1600 block of Lamont Street NW because they thought he matched the description of a suspect. As D.C. police worked to identify Bonilla, Homeland Security agents on patrol with the local officers searched his immigration status. Once D.C. officers realized they had the wrong man, the Homeland Security agents took him into custody.
A video shot Sept. 25 shows a D.C. police officer releasing Mayker Enrique Salas-Araujo from handcuffs, then passing his wrists — still held behind his back — to a masked man in a Homeland Security uniform. The incident, which occurred outside D.C. Bilingual Public Charter School during dismissal, began as a traffic stop for a car missing a rear license plate, a D.C. police report shows. According to the report, the driver was arrested by D.C. police and the passenger was released. The report doesn’t mention that D.C. police released the passenger, Salas-Araujo, directly into ICE custody.
An order signed in August by D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith allows officers to share information with immigration authorities about people not in custody — such as during traffic stops. Even under the order, D.C. police policy bars officers from alerting federal immigration authorities when they release someone. But some critics have argued D.C. police no longer need to alert federal immigration authorities if they are already on the scene of the arrest as part of the patrol. A D.C. police spokesperson did not respond to a request to make Smith available for an interview.
The police department has for years been restricted by D.C. law from cooperating with immigration authorities but was compelled to aid in immigration enforcement during the 30-day emergency Trump declared in August to fight crime. When the emergency ended Sept. 10, Bowser said that “immigration enforcement is not what MPD does, and with the end of the emergency, it won’t be what MPD does in the future.” But immigration authorities have continued to patrol alongside D.C. police, leaving some residents distrustful of the local department.
‘No MPD officer works specifically with ICE’
The mayor acknowledged last month that D.C. police have been patrolling with Homeland Security agencies and said “that should change.” And in recent remarks, she has said she is “working on” separating Homeland Security agencies from the task forces.
A spokesperson for her office said Wednesday that ICE agents are part of the federal task forces but are not patrolling with D.C. police.
Donohue’s video shows masked men wearing vests that say “POLICE ICE” and “ERO,” for Enforcement and Removal Operations, a division of ICE.
Four days before witnessing the arrest, Donohue had sought clarity on D.C. police’s relationship with federal authorities at a monthly Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting. He thanked D.C. police Lt. Kerron Roberts for the increased law enforcement attention in the same block where Matute would later be arrested. Roberts said there were nightly joint local-federal patrols in the area where residents had complained about drug activity, and he credited the federal law enforcement surge with an uptick in narcotics arrests.
Offering one of the clearest public explanations of how the federal law enforcement surge has played out on the ground, Roberts said D.C. police crime suppression teams, driving marked police cruisers and in full uniform, worked in teams alongside federal partners including Homeland Security, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and more.
After Roberts said that “we work with ICE,” Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Jamila White interrupted to point out how the statement clashed with what the mayor and the police chief had told the public. “Thank you for admitting that MPD is still working with ICE, because the mayor has said several times that MPD is not working with ICE, and you just confirmed that,” White said.
Roberts began to protest, saying that “we’re not working with ICE specifically. ICE is one of the federal agencies that works with the D.C. Safe initiative at one point.” A D.C. police captain then cut him off.
In another neighborhood meeting Wednesday, Roberts walked back his previous comments. “No MPD officer works specifically with ICE,” Roberts said. “MPD does not work directly with ICE supporting their mission.” A spokesperson for the mayor declined to comment on Roberts’ remarks and a spokesperson for D.C. police did not respond to request for comment.
In the week following the arrest, Donohue said he thought of Matute’s plea nearly every moment. He called ICE’s Baltimore Field Office and searched the online detainee locator, he contacted D.C. police commanders, and he knocked on doors at places he thought Matute’s family might have lived. He stood outside apartment buildings in his neighborhood with a photo of Matute and a message he had translated into Spanish: “Do you know this man?”
On Saturday, Donohue’s phone rang: A neighbor had found Matute’s family. Donohue and a cousin who had lived with Matute in D.C. began texting, using the translate feature to understand each other. Through Donohue, the cousin declined to be interviewed. The family did not know where Matute was, only that the ICE website said to call for more information — but the cousin told Donohue they were afraid to call.
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