ICE reportedly targeting businesses and restaurants in DC [View all]
Source: ABC News
May 6, 2025, 11:32 PM
Immigration and Customs Enforcement allegedly conducted raids targeting businesses in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. A coalition of activists had warned delivery drivers and restaurants of the planned enforcement one day prior. "I have heard those reports, I've been getting them all morning. I am disturbed by them," D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser told reporters Tuesday. "It appears that ICE is at restaurants or even in neighborhoods, and it doesn't look like they're targeting criminals. It is disrupting."
She also emphasized that the Metropolitan Police Department was not involved. George Escobar, chief of programs and services at CASA, an organization geared toward improving quality of life for working-class Americans, told ABC News by phone on Tuesday that the organization regularly receives tips about planned raids -- but this one was different. "This one, to be honest, alarmed us a little bit, because it was really specific," Escobar told ABC News.
The organization has run a 24-hour tip hotline since the first Trump administration. "We're experienced. We don't get alarmed by, like, you know, any old threat, because, you know, they're frequent, right? And they come in all different, all different types of forms," he said. However, in this instance, CASA was warned that ICE would be using President Donald Trump's executive order aimed at the "beautification" of the U.S. capital to justify the raids, Escobar said.
"We received notice about a specific kind of operation on how they were going to be conducted: what the pretense of maybe entering some of these small businesses were going to be, the fact that they were looking specifically at food businesses and possibly delivery workers," he explained. ABC News reached out to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE for comment but has not yet received a response.
Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/US/ice-reportedly-targeting-businesses-restaurants-dc/story?id=121539713
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