During the Trump administration’s law enforcement surge in D.C., U.S. Park Police tailed a Guatemalan man along Rock Creek Parkway, following him to a market in the Petworth neighborhood that September day because, they said, he had been driving with a ladder on his van.
When he stopped, according to court documents, federal immigration agents showed up and took him away.
In December, a pool maintenance worker driving his employer’s van approached a road barricade just outside the city and was instructed by Park Police to stop. But it was Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who scanned his driver’s license and arrested him on the spot, said the worker, whose identity was withheld in court documents.
And in another December arrest that started with Park Police, ICE agents handcuffed a mechanical repair worker from Nicaragua who was in the United States on humanitarian parole and sent him to a detention center to be deported.
All of those incidents showed up in a review of court records filed between September and February that are part of a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security alleging the agency violated federal law by making immigration arrests in D.C. without a warrant or probable cause.
At least 10 arrests of immigrants by ICE involved the Park Police in the D.C. area, those records show. At least three involved arrests of workers traveling in commercial vehicles, according to the review by Capital News Service and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, both based at the University of Maryland.
Advocates say that this tranche of documents reveals only a fraction of the arrests they are witnessing on the parkways and streets patrolled by Park Police.
The documents consist of immigrants’ sworn declarations and ICE arrest records. Most of the accounts are filed under pseudonyms because they fear retaliation against themselves or their families.
At a time when ICE is increasingly reliant on alliances with other law enforcement agencies to fulfill President Donald Trump’s mandate for ramped-up immigration enforcement, a partnership with the Park Police and mundane traffic safety laws have made it possible for immigrants to be taken into custody, advocates say.
Park Police have jurisdiction over federal land in the Washington metropolitan area, as well as parts of San Francisco and New York City. They are tasked with protecting national monuments and their surrounding areas, including federally managed roads like the Baltimore-Washington, Clara Barton and George Washington Memorial parkways.
But the agency’s responsibilities also include working with DHS. By spring, the Park Police is planning to add more than 300 officers in D.C., according to an agency spokesperson. A $70,000 signing bonus is currently advertised on the force’s website.
Advocates say that Park Police officers are using public safety laws, including one that prohibits commercial vehicles on national parkways without a special permit, as a pretext to make immigration arrests.
“I think it’s obvious they’re profiling,” said Austin Rose, an attorney at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. “They pull over a work truck, assuming it’s going to be a Latino man. … That’s the basis for what they’re doing.” Rose is one of several attorneys representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit against DHS.
The agency’s conduct fits a pattern of behavior by law enforcement agencies across the country, said Naureen Shah, director of government affairs for the equality division of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“They’re simply using the legal authorities that they have, whether it be for investigating traffic violations or inspections of food and commercial vehicles inspections, to stop people and pull them out of their cars and demand to see their papers,” she said.
A White House spokesperson defended the joint operations.
“President Trump has transformed DC from a crime-ridden mess into a beautiful, clean, safe city,” Taylor Rogers, the spokesperson, said in a statement. “To ensure the long-term success of the operation, federal and local law enforcement officers continue to work together to keep DC safe.”
Under Trump’s “Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful” executive order, a task force was created to facilitate collaboration between local law enforcement and a slew of federal agencies, including DHS and the Department of the Interior, which oversees the Park Police.
That task force organized the traffic stop where the pool maintenance technician was arrested, according to court records. On that day, agents from ICE, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Diplomatic Security Service all reported to a local parkway to assist the Park Police, according to an ICE arrest record filed in the lawsuit against DHS.
When the Park Police conducted the traffic stop, an ICE officer took the opportunity to interview the man about his legal status, according to the report. In a sworn declaration filed last month, however, the man said the agents did not ask him about his legal status or life circumstances.
He had no criminal record, the man said, and ICE hadn’t put a warrant out for his arrest. The interaction was the first he’d had with any law enforcement group during his 13 years living in the United States, he said.
Still, the ICE agents snapped the worker’s driver’s license in half and told him he wasn’t allowed to be in the country, the man said in his sworn declaration.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment about the arrests.
The spokesperson from the Park Police’s public information office maintained that the agency does not conduct immigration-related stops or arrests. Vehicles are stopped, she said in an emailed statement, to enforce traffic and public safety laws.
The ban against commercial vehicles on parkways exists, the Park Police spokesperson said, because parkway features like low clearance bridges and narrower lanes make the roads unsuitable for commercial travel. Violating the law, she said, usually results in a traffic citation.
But when immigrants’ work vehicles are pulled over by Park Police at multiagency traffic stops, court records show that some drivers have been taken into custody by Department of Homeland Security agents for immigration violations.
Park Police told the Guatemalan man — who used the pseudonym Camilo Doe in court documents — that he was not allowed to drive on a parkway that runs through Rock Creek Park in Washington because his van, which had a ladder on top, was a commercial vehicle. The car was registered in his name, his license plates and registration were current and he was driving within the speed limit, the man said in a sworn declaration. He’d previously driven on the road “nearly every day” without issue.
Still, immigration agents responded to the scene and arrested him.
While the CNS/Howard Center review found at least five arrests on Washington-area parkways, it’s hard to capture the full extent of immigration arrests that occur after Park Police initiated traffic stops because publicly available data is limited.
The Park Police’s spokesperson said that the commercial vehicle ban was in place before the task force was formed, and that commercial vehicle inspections are routine. Its partner agencies, she said, do not interfere with traffic stops.
“After we have completed the reason for our stop, DHS, if present, may have follow-up questions that may result in an arrest,” she said.
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