On February 25, Ayuda testified before the Council of the District of Columbia at the Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety Performance Oversight Hearing on the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). As collaboration between Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) and the MPD continues, our team once again reiterated the grave threat this collaboration poses to the immigrants we serve as well as public safety in general.
Full copies of Ayuda’s testimony are available below. Click to jump to testimony:
- Written Testimony: Sandra Benavente, Advocacy Manager
- Written Testimony: Abi Hollinger, Immigration Staff Attorney
You can watch Ayuda’s testimonies here.
Written Testimony As Filed – Sandra Benavente, Advocacy Manager
Good afternoon. My name is Sandra Benavente, and I am Ayuda’s Advocacy Manager.
Ayuda is a nonprofit organization that has served immigrant communities in DC for more than 50 years. We provide legal, social, and language access services to immigrants and their families, including survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, trafficking, and other serious crimes as they navigate government systems in pursuit of safety and stability.
We are deeply concerned about the complicity of MPD and the DC government in exposing immigrant residents to harm. At the federal level, relatively quiet but significant procedural changes are happening in the immigration system, from the firing of immigration judges to the expansion of third-country removals. Brick by brick, due process is being dismantled. The federal government is making it easier to detain and deport people with less oversight and fewer safeguards.
The District should play no role in advancing that agenda. Yet when MPD collaborates with federal immigration authorities, they are doing just that. They are actively collaborating in actions that terrorize immigrants and separate families, violently target Black and Brown neighbors regardless of immigration status, spread fear in every member of the community, and compromise public safety.
We want to bring awareness to MPD’s new practice of asking survivors seeking U visa certifications for passports or other identification documents. In the context of MPD’s collaboration with federal immigration authorities, these requests create fear and uncertainty. As a result, many survivors are reconsidering if coming forward is worth the risk.
MPD has publicly committed to being trauma-informed. Yet community trust has been deeply eroded by the collaboration, and practices like this cause further damage. What is the purpose of this new practice? What safeguards are in place to ensure that information shared by survivors will not be shared with federal immigration authorities? And what steps are being taken to repair the harm caused?
Thus far, our questions and concerns about the collaboration’s impact on our clients have been ignored by MPD. We understand Council members have sent questions of their own. But, this Committee is charged with oversight, and that responsibility requires more than sending a letter and waiting for a response that never comes. This Committee has tools and authority beyond what community members have, and we urge you to use them to demand transparency, accountability, and clear answers.
The Committee must uphold the Sanctuary Values Amendment. It must hold MPD accountable to its mission to “protect [the District’s] residents […] with the highest regard for the sanctity of human life”. This means, among other things, ending the collaboration between MPD and federal agents. This also means reducing barriers for immigrant survivors by creating clear U visa certification policies, ensuring confidentially of survivor information.
We all have a responsibility to make this city safe, and that involves active effort, participation, and communication between our local agencies and the people they serve. Every person here is upholding our end of the bargain. We ask you to uphold yours.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
Written Testimony as Filed – Abi Hollinger, Immigration Staff Attorney, DC
Good afternoon, Chairperson Pinto and members of the Committee. My name is Abi Hollinger, and I am an Immigration Attorney at Ayuda.
My colleague just described some of the most recent federal efforts to further strip immigrants of their rights, which are being implemented as we speak.
In this moment, DC should be protecting its residents from federal overreach – but instead, the DC government and MPD are collaborating with ICE to funnel more people into detention and deportation. I want to talk about what that means for Ayuda’s clients.
- It means a woman was recently the victim of a violent crime but she is too scared to report it to MPD. The risk of any interaction with the police, even for victims, is higher while DC is collaborating with ICE. So she decides not to report.
- It means our clients are brutally beaten by DHS as they are taken into immigration custody. MPD says they are here to protect us – but what about when residents need protection from other law enforcement?
- It means clients who live in Maryland and Virginia are missing or postponing appointments with us because they are too scared to come to DC. They know this could delay or irreversibly damage their immigration cases, but the risk of detention is just too high.
In addition to being an immigration attorney, I’m a DC native, and I’m part of the rapid response organizing in my neighborhood. So I also want to tell you what we see on our streets:
- We see DHS staging its operations from the Park Road MPD station. And then we see caravans of MPD and undercover federal vehicles leave the station together, drive into our neighborhoods together, and stop and detain our neighbors … together.
- I saw this happen a block away from my home. A man was pulled over, and within minutes ICE and other federal agents had swarmed the scene. They kept this man waiting for a long time. While he waited, he asked us to call his brother and tell him what was happening. His brother sobbed on the phone. The police and ICE eventually let this man go… but so much damage had already been done.
These stories, and the stories community members have shared today, point to a very simple truth: you all cannot fulfill your duty to protect DC residents while collaborating with those intent on harming them. We demand an immediate end to all collaboration, including rescission of the CoP Order and dismantling of the taskforce.
The people of DC have shown up forcefully and vocally for our neighbors. We demand the Council do the same.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
For questions regarding Ayuda’s advocacy, please reach out to Advocacy Manager Sandra Benavente at [email protected]