It’s been a month and a half since Donald Trump declared a “crime emergency” in Washington, DC, my home of 14 years. In Columbia Heights, the neighborhood where I’ve lived for most of that time, it’s impossible to adjust to the new normal. Yes, I have seen armed soldiers in Metro stations. But what I’ve witnessed steps from my front door is far more disturbing.
I first noticed the effects of the federal takeover on Aug. 14. Multiple Metropolitan Police officers loaded scooters onto trucks across from the Civic Plaza as three of their vans blocked the bus lane. Delivery drivers and vendors rely on their scooters to make a living. It seemed aggressive for law enforcement to remove vehicles without first ticketing or talking with the owners. In retrospect, the confiscation of scooters seems tame. Now federal immigration agents are hauling away my neighbors.
I wish I could cite numbers of arrests, name the victims, and map the sites of their disappearance. But few reporters have chosen to chronicle the actions of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Columbia Heights. Instead, I write to describe how a community has suffered — and also how it refuses to be erased — in the face of a blatant terror campaign. I write to bear witness and to honor the work of those who are organizing at great personal risk.
It may be easy to ignore what’s happening miles from the Capitol or tank-bedecked Union Station. But talk to enough people in Columbia Heights, and you’ll find out that the 2,000 members of the National Guard deployed from six states is not what’s keeping us up at night. It’s masked federal agents yanking our coworkers, baristas, nannies, and friends out of smashed car windows and bundling them into unmarked vans. It’s the closure of beloved businesses and the disappearance of the street vendors who sold pupusas and soccer jerseys.
Like many families with young kids, our elementary school is our anchor. My kids’ classmates are Latino, African-American, Afro-Caribbean, Ethiopian, and Vietnamese. The annual Multicultural Potluck features injera and tamales alongside pizza and brownies. A DCPS Community School, it provides far more than reading and math. Our school offers free health checks, mental health counselors, a clothing closet, employment resources for parents, and countless other services. Teachers, security guards, and the principal greet each student by name. For a heavily immigrant community that has long faced threats and insecurity, school is the place where community members feel safest.
All that feels illusory now, overshadowed by the presence of Border Patrol thousands of miles from any US border. During the first week of the federal takeover, which coincided with the first week of the school year, 40 kids didn’t show up. Parents feared capture if they left their buildings. Every day I ask which classmates were absent, and my heart sinks when I hear the list of names. On the playground, I imagine the slide and swingset empty. I take pictures of my kids with their friends since pre-K, wondering if soon the pictures will be all they’ll have to remember them by. As PTO president, I am trying to set up a walking bus so other parents can accompany kids of vulnerable families to school. Still, questions of how kids will travel alone from their homes to the meetup spots and how to establish trust with parents who have every reason to be wary remain unanswered. The drop in attendance isn’t temporary. Families have chosen to leave the country rather than face the trauma of living in DC.
Should we host the student-staff soccer game this fall, or will families be at risk if they attend? What is the best format for a Know Your Rights training, considering that many people can’t leave their homes? These are the questions the PTO Board has grappled with since Trump’s re-election and more intensely since the federal takeover. When asked to join a working group for the new middle school that will serve Columbia Heights, my first thought was whether there would even be enough students to enroll in it come 2028.
Yet the challenges we face are only half of the story. The other half, which has sustained me throughout this time, is how DC organizers are finding creative and strategic ways to defend their communities. Ordinary people far from Columbia Heights and DC should take note.
Sleepless neighbors track the flight paths of helicopters that tear over our homes every night, obstructing the path of air ambulances headed to local hospitals. They call Park Police to file noise complaints, share results, and encourage others to do the same. Others film the movements of federal agents, risking arrest themselves. Just blocks from my house, groups of angry community members have forced agents to disperse by congregating, shouting, and filming. I sleep easier knowing that neighbors have signed up for a night patrol, biking or walking the streets into the early hours, when masked agents threaten construction workers at checkpoints or traffic stops. Simply securing the name and birthdate of the person being detained is invaluable to organizations like Harriet’s Wildest Dreams and Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid, which help family members locate loved ones and connect them with legal resources.
As an organizer with the Free DC Project, I’ve participated in actions from Capitol Hill to Malcolm X Park; from historic U Street to my local library. Every night at 7 pm, residents across DC’s eight Wards join in cacerolazos, or pot-banging, a tool used by protesters from Serbia to Venezuela to challenge authoritarianism. Cars, Metro buses, and even traffic enforcement vehicles loudly honk their support. A group I volunteer with has increased its weekly delivery of food and essential baby supplies to migrant families by hundreds, as families risk arrest and deportation if they go to the grocery store. My personal actions are not the point of this story — others give much more time and energy to the cause. But if a person with a full-time job and two kids can pitch in, so can anyone reading this article — especially those of us who carry a layer of privilege on our skin.
Some ask why there are not daily protests in the streets. Others dismiss actions like the cry of “Free DC” at a Washington Spirit game as spontaneous and fleeting, which belies the strategy and coordination these actions require. Each small action is meticulously planned and designed to lay the groundwork for future resistance. Over Labor Day weekend, over 10,000 people — union workers, immigrant rights groups, and yes, a delegation celebrating our local hero, the Sandwich Guy, marched in protest, as church bells along 16th Street rang out.
I hope that anyone who came to DC for the rally took the time to talk with people in Columbia Heights, where the march began. I hope they saw the signs calling for ICE to leave our city and the handwritten memorials on a tree trunk marking where someone’s loved one was whisked away without being shown a warrant or read their rights. Whether the National Guard stays or goes, the threat to immigrant communities — and to all of our communities — comes from the reckless and unchecked violence enacted by federal agents emboldened by quotas and signing bonuses. May we all stand in solidarity with the children who left their house for the first time in a month in order to attend school, in tears as they passed la migra. May we strengthen the resistance that’s already happening in communities across the country — because that’s where our power lies.
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