Police accountability advocates say that the federal agents roving the District of Columbia’s streets — at times in masks and in unmarked cars with out-of-state plates — are creating confusion for residents that could carry safety risks.
They’re concerned about the possibility of people mistaking criminal acts for law enforcement operations, and vice versa. Some also warn that the lack of identifiability could lead to mistakes that could put responding law enforcement personnel in harm’s way.
“If officers are patrolling public spaces with the power to detain an arrest, which is what you’re seeing, how are people supposed to identify who they’re dealing with, what agency they represent?” said Alicia Yass, counsel for the District’s American Civil Liberties Union.
For weeks, advocates have expressed concern about the safety issues and confusion that masked agents can pose for the public in the context of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. But those concerns have increased now that the administration is sending federal law enforcement to crack down on street-level crime in the nation’s capital, too.
Since the federal takeover, news organizations have widely covered the presence of law enforcement from at least nine different agencies across multiple Cabinet departments. The White House also repeatedly refers to the local crackdowns as an interagency effort.
One White House official argued to NOTUS that “unmarked vehicles are necessary” for federal law enforcement’s jobs to avoid turning them into “a target for the criminals they are trying to arrest.”
But that argument is at odds with advocates who argue ambiguity actually puts agents and the public in more danger.
“The general public cannot tell the difference in many aspects between the good cops and the bad cops, because all they see is a uniform and a faceless entity,” said Diane Goldstein, a former police lieutenant and director of the nonprofit advocacy organization Law Enforcement Action Partnership. “Their ineffective deployment increases the risk to their own officers and the community at large.”
There’s no shortage of examples across Washington of masked agents and unidentified law enforcement vehicles.
Bystanders watched on Sunday morning as six masked officers detained a man, some tackling him to the ground, before refusing to identify themselves or the agency they were working with as a Washington Post reporter recorded the moment.
The Department of Homeland Security later confirmed those agents were immigration enforcement personnel, but the people who saw the arrest were reportedly left rattled and confused. Not even local police were able to tell which federal agency hauled away the man, a food delivery driver.
“It makes accountability much more difficult if you can’t identify exactly who an officer or agent is,” said Noah Chauvin, a former DHS attorney who’s now a professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. “If they end up hurting someone, violating someone’s rights, it’s going to make it that much more difficult to hold them accountable for that, which I think is a major problem.”
Witnesses watched a similar scene play out as masked agents apprehended people from the parking lot in the city’s Home Depot last week, according to The Guardian. And an NBC4 Washington reporter captured video on Wednesday afternoon of federal agents, some wearing masks, tackling a man at the National Mall as he screamed for help in Spanish.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told NOTUS in a statement that federal officers are “highly visible and in marked uniforms running targeted operations.”
But some residents are seeing a different reality playing out on their streets. Law enforcement personnel working on behalf of federal agencies are not covering their faces or using unmarked cars solely during targeted immigration enforcement operations while in the District.
In the city’s H Street corridor on Monday night, NOTUS saw federal agents using nondescript vehicles to help local police with traffic enforcement duties.
That same night, another group of men using unmarked cars and wearing vests labeled as “FBI,” “HSI” or “police” pulled off to the side of the street, apparently to decide where to patrol next.
“Y’all wanna go to Gallery?” an officer wearing a Metro Transit uniform asked them, in an apparent reference to a different District neighborhood. “I mean, got nothin’ else to do, so.”
DHS and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority did not respond to inquiries from NOTUS.
“While Democrats attempt to fearmonger, the truth is that DC residents and visitors are safer now that 630 criminals have been removed from the streets,” Rogers continued. “NOTUS reporters should stop demonizing law enforcement officers and writing press releases for left-wing organizations!”
Some research on the use of unmarked cars in policing shows it can decrease peoples’ perceived legitimacy of officers. And community organizers and law enforcement experts say knowing which agency to go to with questions about their agents or their policing tactics is hard because often it’s unclear who they’re working for.
It’s renewing interest from civil liberties organizations for Congress to act on previously introduced legislation like the Visible Act, which would require federal authorities to be identifiable.
The ACLU of D.C. put out a statement reminding all deployed officers that they’re still bound to constitutional restraints, despite President Donald Trump’s insistence that the police can do “whatever the hell they want.”
“No matter what uniform they wear, federal agents and military troops are bound by the Constitution, including our rights to peaceful assembly, freedom of speech, due process, and safeguards against unlawful searches and seizures,” Hina Shamsi, the director of ACLU’s National Security Project, wrote on Sunday. “If troops or federal agents violate our rights, they must be held accountable.”
But there’s also a second argument that those concerned about the policing tactics are making: They say any ambiguity actually increases the risk to agents, too.
Advocates continue to argue that an individual’s ability to visually confirm that they’re interacting with legitimate law enforcement is almost always helpful to normal policing operations and makes them safer for officers because people are far less likely to mistake their actions for criminal acts. That concern is one reason the city requires local officers to be identifiable and to use marked vehicles for traffic enforcement, though federal personnel aren’t bound by those regulations.
There’s also a rising threat of people impersonating law enforcement, which some state law enforcement agencies and organizations have sent public service announcements about, as something to watch out for.
Federal agents not wearing standardized uniforms and using unmarked vehicles makes impersonation easier, some argue.
“We have seen over the past several months, a number of instances of people pretending to be law enforcement, pretending to be ICE, and using that to perpetrate crimes: sexual assaults, murders, robberies,” Chauvin said. “I think we could see a situation where people get seriously hurt because someone thinks they’re stepping in and preventing a kidnapping.”
Advocacy groups are seeing a change to their work in response.
Bethany Young, director of policy with the DC Justice Lab, said she’s running into real questions about how to advise people who have run-ins with federal agents.
“How do you get accountability if you don’t know who someone is, what agency they work with?” Young asked. “Adding federal agents operating that way is scarier.”
Others said the issue is that misconduct claims are left up to the federal agencies’ inspector general offices to investigate — meaning in terms of federal police accountability, the administration is policing itself.
“That’s part of the reason that there is this culture of fear, is because there are limited means to hold federal agents accountable,” Yass said.
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Correction: The article initially misstated Noah Chauvin’s place of employment. He works for the University of Oklahoma College of Law.