Washington called itself a sanctuary city. Then Trump came back to town

The sound of sparrows chirping on a rainy morning is punctuated by the occasional crackle of tires rolling on wet pavement. The city is still waking up. Soledad is, too, walking in the drizzle to a bus stop near her apartment.

In about 30 minutes, she’ll punch in and begin her day working as a janitor in a government building where she keeps bathrooms and kitchens clean. A short bus ride from her neighborhood leaves just enough time to grab a quick cup of coffee before her shift begins.

At a downtown DC bakery, the cashier flashes a warm smile when she recognizes Soledad walking in. “¿Como está?” she asks. How are you?

Soledad pauses. So many worries are weighing on her. “Pues, aquí,” Soledad says. Well, I’m here.

Because yes, she is here, in a city where she’s lived for more than two decades. But she doesn’t know how much longer she will be.

Soledad has what’s known as Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which provides legal work permits and blocks the government from deporting her and many other immigrants who otherwise would be undocumented. That protection’s days could be numbered; already the Trump administration has said it plans to end TPS for hundreds of thousands of people. Before long, Soledad fears TPS for Salvadorans like her could be next. She agreed to share her perspective with CNN, but asked to be identified only by her first name, and for her face not to be shown, because she fears speaking out could affect her case.

Reminders of the looming threats are everywhere. As she walks from the bus stop to her janitor job, Soledad often passes the White House, where President Trump and administration officials have made no secret of their mass deportation plans.

And at a recent meeting of local activists, the 49-year-old Salvadoran immigrant says she posed a question she’d never expected to ask: “Is Washington a sanctuary city, or isn’t it?”

During the previous Trump administration, DC’s leaders were vocal about protecting immigrant residents. Lately, Soledad says, their silence has spoken volumes.

“It makes you feel like you’ve been left alone, like you’ve been abandoned,” Soledad says.

The mayor used to call DC a ‘proud sanctuary city.’ Now she avoids the term

There’s not one official definition for “sanctuary city,” and different governments have different meanings for the term. Some see the label as more of a symbolic gesture than a move that actually impacts people’s lives. But immigrant rights advocates have long argued that local officials play a critically important role. A city policy can be the difference between someone simply getting a traffic ticket or ending up in deportation proceedings.

“Right now the immigrant community has two ways to defend ourselves. One is the courts, and the other one is local officials,” says Jaime Contreras, executive vice president of the Service Employee International Union’s 32BJ Capital Area District. “And if local officials are running away from our community, that…has a devastating effect.”

Nearly one in four residents of Washington and its surrounding metro area are immigrants, according to Census data. And in the past, Mayor Muriel Bowser frequently called Washington a “proud sanctuary city.”

“In November, I reaffirmed Washington, DC’s status as a sanctuary city, and now we are doubling down,” Bowser said in January 2017, just days before Trump’s first term began.

Her comments were part of an announcement of $500,000 in grant funding for legal work helping immigrants in the district. And for years, a press release with the quote was archived on the city’s website. Now that page is gone, along with several others that used the “sanctuary city” term.

Asked about the pages’ apparent removal in recent months, first reported by Axios, a spokesman for the mayor referred to her remarks in a February press conference but declined to comment further. At that event, when asked by a reporter why she’d stopped using the term “sanctuary city,” Bowser called the phrase “misleading.”

“I think it’s misleading to suggest to anyone that if you’re violating immigration laws, this is a place where you can violate immigration laws,” she said. “You are vulnerable to federal immigration enforcement.”

 

Asked what message she’d send to undocumented immigrants in the city, Bowser instead offered what sounded more like a response to conservative critics.

“We don’t have a migrant crisis in our city, so I don’t want anybody to think that we have been overrun and we have a migrant crisis, because we don’t,” she said.

Bowser’s shifting response on immigration matters is one of a number of ways the mayor, a leading figure in the Democratic resistance during Trump’s first term, is now striking a less defiant tone.

The changing approach comes as Trump repeats attacks on DC and its leadership, threatening to “take over” the city.

The mayor has a good reason to tread carefully, according to Abel Nuñez, executive director of the Central American Resource Center in Washington, an organization that serves the city’s Latino community.

DC’s status as a federal district puts the city and its more than 700,000 residents in a uniquely precarious position, Nuñez says. In 1973, Congress passed a statute allowing DC residents to elect local leaders to run day-to-day affairs, but lawmakers have threatened to reverse that arrangement.

“That can be taken away at any moment. We get treated like children. That’s just the reality of it,” Nuñez says. “We’re allowed to manage our own affairs until they don’t see fit for us to do so.”

And no leader would risk her city’s entire future for one group, he says.

“There’s no reason to poke the bear. … You have to choose what your battles are. Dying on the hill of the ‘sanctuary city’ moniker, I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. I agree with the mayor,” Nuñez says. “You need to tone it down, shut down the website, do the things you need to do so that you can quietly negotiate.”

But some advocates for immigrants are more critical.

Contreras, who represents thousands of cleaners, security officers and maintenance workers at the SEIU, says workers will remember their local leaders’ actions the next time elections come around.

“Some of these elected officials…benefitted for years from having the support of a certain community, the immigrant community, in particular,” he says. “And then, when it comes time to defend our community, they run away from the issue as opposed to leaning in and saying, ‘Wait a minute, these are human beings, these are workers, these are not criminals.’ They run away from us, and that is frustrating and insulting.”

 

And for immigrants in the community, the impact isn’t just emotional, he says.

“It has a devastating effect on how they go about their day. They have to be looking over their shoulders all the time. They see a police officer, they get scared. They see a crime, they’re not going to report it. For safety reasons, it’s just not good,” he says.

Trump vows ‘maximum enforcement’ of federal immigration law in DC

Minutes after stepping to the podium earlier this month for his final press conference as DC’s interim US attorney, Ed Martin said he had a warning for the city’s citizens.

The district’s status as a sanctuary city is “crippling” local law enforcement efforts to make DC safer, Martin said.

“There needs to be a robust discussion now about DC’s sanctuary status, and its justice system and its judges, and if that means that home rule is on the table, then so be it,” he said.

In the past, DC officials have used the sanctuary city term to describe things like the Metropolitan Police Department’s policy of not asking people about their citizenship or residency status, or city funding for immigrant legal services. In 2020, the City Council passed a “Sanctuary Values Amendment Act,” which limits the city’s Department of Corrections from cooperating with federal immigration authorities “absent a judicial warrant or order issued by a federal judge.”

Many of the largest cities in the country have sanctuary policies in place. Supporters of the measures argue they keep communities safe by fostering trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement. Critics — including President Trump — say they endanger public safety.

The second Trump administration has made cracking down on sanctuary cities a pillar of its enforcement strategy, with the president calling them “death traps” that protect criminals. A federal judge recently ruled against the administration’s efforts to block federal funding to sanctuary cities, finding that portions of Trump’s executive orders were unconstitutional.

Meanwhile the Justice Department has threatened to prosecute state and local officials who resist the federal immigration crackdown.

Republican leaders in Congress also have criticized sanctuary cities, most notably in a March hearing before a House committee, where lawmakers grilled mayors of prominent sanctuary cities: Boston, Chicago, Denver and New York. DC’s mayor wasn’t asked to appear.

 

But officials have homed in on the capital’s sanctuary policies in other ways.

Trump’s “Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful” executive order, issued in late March, created a federal task force whose mission includes “monitoring the district’s sanctuary-city status and compliance with the enforcement of federal immigration law.” The order also calls for the task force to direct “maximum enforcement” of federal immigration law, and to redirect available law enforcement resources “to apprehend and deport illegal aliens in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.”

And Republicans in the House and Senate have introduced legislation aiming to remove DC’s sanctuary laws, arguing they have “devastating, real-life consequences.”

As he introduced the Senate’s version of the bill last month, Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tennessee, called DC’s policies “unconscionable.”

“President Trump’s efforts to enforce immigration laws should not be undermined by local leadership anywhere in the United States, let alone Washington, DC,” he said.

The way some immigrants see DC is changing

It wasn’t long ago that many immigrants saw Washington as one of the safest places to live, according to Antonia Peña, who represents nannies, house cleaners and care workers as a leader of the DC chapter of Care in Action.

The district’s policies, including its minimum wage and its protections for workers, were among the best in the region, she says. “And in terms of immigration, Washington has always been considered a sanctuary.”

But now, she says, given the pressures DC is under from the federal government, many immigrants are starting to see the city differently.

“Washington right now is becoming the area with the least protection, legally speaking,” she says. “And that is what we’ve been explaining to people, talking about it and accepting it in a way, because this is a huge impact under this administration, something that no one expected.”

Already high costs were making many workers reconsider living in the city, she says. “Now this is going to become one more reason to move out of DC,” she says.

 

Just a few months into the new Trump administration, leaders of immigrant advocacy organizations in DC say fears are running high.

“The need is so big and the threats are so big. … I’m running out of resources, because we’re tapped out,” says Rev. Julio Hernández of the Congregation Action Network.

Recently, he says he’s gotten calls about people who’ve been evicted because some landlords no longer want to rent to undocumented immigrants. Many are worried the district’s police department could be federalized, he says, converting the officers who patrol communities into immigration agents.

“There is a big concern of what could come,” Hernández says. “The feeling is, if there’s more funding, then there will be a greater increase in immigration raids. And DC is a pretty easy target. … If they lose their self-rule, we feel there’s an even bigger danger for the city and for its residents.”

‘We are the only people that can keep us safe’

Protesters pack into a park for a rally in DC’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood on a spring evening. Soledad is in the crowd.

In the past, she might have joined the speakers on stage, sharing her story. But today, she’s watching from the sidelines. Organizers of this protest told her they were worried noncitizens could be targeted for speaking out.

So Soledad doesn’t tell this crowd about the years she’s spent fighting for immigrant rights, or about her 15-year-old daughter, a star student — and US citizen — who’s often stood alongside her. Instead, she listens.

Some speakers at the rally are wearing masks to protect their anonymity.

“How is it possible that being an immigrant in DC means living in fear?” one speaker asks.

“It wasn’t until I moved to DC that I felt like I belonged in this country,” another says.

“With the silence of our elected officials, I feel they are giving away our rights. … We are the only people that can keep us safe.”

 

Organizers and participants at this protest say DC’s leaders should do more to fight back against Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“We fought hard to create the sanctuary policies, and we’re not going to let Congress eliminate them without a fight,” Oliver Merino of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center tells CNN affiliate WJLA. “The community wants the mayor, the city council, to step up and to publicly say they will protect our sanctuary policies that keep our community safe.”

An organizer onstage says that members of the City Council were invited to the event, but none of them showed up.

One by one, each council member’s name is read from a list, then their photo is taped to a railing onstage.

“Is he here or is he missing?” the organizer asks, craning her neck and looking out at the crowd like a sailor scanning the horizon.

It doesn’t take long for the crowd to answer: “MISSING!”

A few council members’ photos fall off the railing in the evening breeze.

“Even the papers are scared,” someone quips in the crowd.

Why ‘silent sanctuary’ may be DC’s new strategy

Asked via email whether DC remains a sanctuary city, the offices of the city’s 13 sitting council members didn’t respond to CNN’s request for comment.

It’s no surprise to find critics of the president’s immigration crackdowns in DC. Trump won less than 7% of votes cast here in the last presidential election.

But DC isn’t like other liberal cities, according to Rick Su, a distinguished professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Many cities that get in standoffs over immigration with the federal government have states to protect them, he says.

“The funny thing and the scary thing is that DC is essentially…a creature of the federal government, of Congress, of the president,” Su says.

Though it’s unclear whether Congress really wants to take on the challenge of running the city again, Su says, lawmakers could pass another statute to retake control.

Given that reality, Su says it appears the city’s leaders are currently pursuing a policy he’s dubbed “silent sanctuary.”

“We can still do our thing,” Su says city leaders are likely thinking, “as long as we keep a very friendly and…submissive public face.”

She worries ICE could show up, but still leads the crowd in her favorite protest chant

Soledad walks in front of the Supreme Court carrying a tote bag emblazoned with the three red stars and two red stripes of DC’s flag.

She sets it down near the building’s steps and pulls out several banners and a megaphone she’s tucked inside. Soledad and dozens of others are holding a vigil to support Temporary Protected Status, which the Trump administration has said it’s ending for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans. In a matter of weeks, a Supreme Court decision will clear the way for the administration’s plan to take effect while legal challenges over the matter continue in court.

But on this evening in early May, Soledad and the other protesters say they’re pushing to bring attention to their cause before it’s too late.

Even though it’s been raining all afternoon, a sizeable crowd has gathered, and the sun is coming out. But many of those gathered are worried – not just about the court’s looming decision, but about reports and rumors that have been swirling in the city all week.

Homeland Security Investigations agents served more than 100 notices of inspection at businesses around the DC area. The agency said it was an effort to ensure compliance with immigration and employment laws.

Bowser told reporters the district’s police weren’t involved, and that she was “disturbed” by what she’d heard had unfolded.

“It appears that ICE is at restaurants or even in neighborhoods,” she said, “and it doesn’t look like they’re targeting criminals. It is disrupting.”

A coalition of immigrant advocacy groups slammed the mayor for appearing at an event with Trump while reports of the enforcement effort left immigrant communities in the city terrified.

Soledad is worried ICE agents could show up at this protest, and she knows others are concerned about that, too.

 

Recently she’s been more cautious about speaking out. At a protest she attended earlier this month, she loaned out her megaphone to amplify someone else’s voice.

With each day that passes, though, she’s growing more concerned about what could happen if she doesn’t speak out than what will happen if she does. For her and so many others whose lives are at stake, she says, staying quiet simply isn’t an option.

She can’t imagine being forced to abandon the life she’s worked hard to build or having to take her daughter away from the only home she’s ever known.

“Un pueblo únido jamás será vencido,” she shouts into the megaphone. A people united will never be defeated.

Following her lead, the crowd repeats the popular protest mantra. Then Soledad belts out a less common line that’s become her favorite chant:

“Un pueblo callado jamás será escuchado.”

The people who are silent will never be heard.

CNN’s Gabe Cohen contributed to this report.