President Donald Trump has unleashed federal officers and the National Guard on the streets of Washington, D.C. ostensibly to combat “violent gangs” and other criminals, but videos appear to show agents harassing and detaining food delivery workers, leaving the capital’s immigrant population wary.
A recent NBC News report documented a D.C. resident’s shock when — after ordering food from Uber Eats — he went outside to determine why his delivery driver hadn’t made it to his house, only to find the driver surrounded by federal agents.
“I stepped into the street, I looked down and see lights in the direction, like police lights, in the direction of where my driver was,” Tyler DeSue told NBC News. “It was my driver by himself and, like, nine different officers all wearing different uniforms. … Most of them had face coverings on.”
The agents reportedly took the driver, named Sidi, into custody after questioning him about his vehicle’s registration and his immigration status.
Sidi asked for an Arabic translator as he was unsure of why he was being detained, but a Homeland Security Investigations agent informed him no one with them spoke Arabic and thus could not tell him why he was being detained in a way he could understand.
According to the report, Sidi is not the only delivery driver to face harassment at the hands of Trump’s federal agents. Videos and eyewitness accounts of agents stopping drivers have been making the rounds online and are being discussed in delivery driver chat groups, according to the report.
During a normal day in the District, delivery drivers typically criss-cross the city picking up orders, some in their cars and others on small scooters with attached delivery boxes. But locals are reporting that fewer drivers are on the streets since the crackdown began.
“The number of people who come to pick up orders has diminished,” Clarissa Vasquez, who works at a Columbia Heights restaurant, told NBC News. “We are at 4% of the people who come to pick up food.”
Some of the drivers may have left D.C. to take orders in nearby Virginia and Maryland, where they’re less likely to run into federal agents.
Atenas Estrada, a program director with Amica Center for Immigrant Rights in D.C., said the center is aware of the reports concerning delivery drivers. She told NBC News that the threat of detainment can lead to fear among both undocumented and documented migrants.
“What I am seeing, personally, is widespread fear amongst community members. People, you know, making decisions or avoiding places that they perhaps would not otherwise avoid or leave,” Estrada told NBC News.
Trump launched his federal patrols after Edward Coristine, aka “Big Balls,” one of DOGE head Elon Musk’s staffers, was attacked by a group of teenagers from Maryland.
Despite Trump’s insistence that D.C. is rife with violent crime, official statistics from the Metropolitan Police Department show a 30 percent decrease in violent crime since the same time last year.
The president has accused the MPD of reporting “fake crime numbers” to “create a false illusion of safety” in a Truth Social post. He suggested that a probe into the department’s numbers may be underway.
“This is a very bad and dangerous thing to do, and they are under serious investigation for so doing!” Trump wrote.
In January, just before Trump took office, the Justice Department released a report noting that violent crime in D.C. was down by 35 percent, marking the lowest its been in 30 years.
