The headlines these past few weeks have focused on the National Guard deployed by the American president to the streets of Washington DC.
With combat rifles and armoured vehicles, they are an effective visual for Donald Trump.
They neatly project his power. But they are a distraction too.
While the troops may, for his supporters, represent hard presidential power in a Democrat-run city perceived to be out of control, they are not actually fighting crime (nor are they the right tool to do that) and they are not focused on the nation’s immigration challenges.
This week, they were spotted collecting litter in downtown DC.
Yet Trump’s law, order, and crime agenda has many strands which represent an unprecedented extension of presidential authority. Two weeks ago, at the White House, he told America what to expect.
“We’re going to take our capital back; we’re going to take it back,” he said.
“Massive enforcement operations targeting known gangs, drug dealers and criminal networks to get them the hell off the street, maybe get them out of the country because a lot of them came into our country illegally.
“They shouldn’t have been allowed in. They come from Venezuela. They come from all over the world. We’re going to get them the hell out. They won’t be here long.”
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The real story is going on beyond the National Guard photo-op.
On Tuesday morning, I set out to see what this sweeping new presidential power really looks like on the streets of America’s capital city. I didn’t expect that it would take five minutes and a drive of just a few blocks to find what appears to be a new normal.
The neighbourhood of Mount Pleasant is a couple of miles north of the White House.
It’s a proudly multicultural and multi-income part of the city. In that sense, it’s somewhat unusual. Washington is mostly a city of bubbles – where different communities are distinct, and the wealth gap is vast.
Turning off 17th Street, the flashing lights were ahead. It was just after 7am. This residential neighbourhood had been awoken this particular morning by the sound of a commotion which was unfolding in front of me.
A construction truck had been pulled over by unmarked police vehicles. Three Latino men had been taken out, handcuffed and were in the process of being taken to the police cars.
‘You’re the Gestapo’
It was an immigration raid. The men had been detained because they were not able to prove, on demand, as they went to work, whether they were in the country legally.
Locals, drawn out of their houses, shouted at the federal agents from ICE – the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.
“Shame, shame, shame. You’re the Gestapo… why are you doing this,” they shouted.
“These are hardworking people,” one neighbour said of the men detained.
“These people work in our neighbourhood. They work in our restaurants. They’re our neighbours. They are taking hardworking people away, not criminals.”
“I’m feeling devastated for those men who were just ripped out of their lives unceremoniously,” another neighbour told me. “I’m feeling scared for my neighbours who are afraid to leave their house because they’re afraid of exactly that happening.”
“This is not making our city safe,” her partner added, his young children crying in his arms. “Pulling out workers who are an essential member of our community and being like, ‘oh, that makes DC a better place’. It doesn’t.”
The surge of federal law enforcement agents into America’s capital has been unprecedented, and their powers are too.
Using presidential authority and harnessing the unique status of Washington as a district rather than a state, Trump has taken control of local law enforcement agencies in the city.
The city’s Metropolitan Police now answer to him, not to the local government, and are working alongside federal agencies.
In a recent statement, a spokesperson for ICE said: “We will support the re-establishment of law and order and public safety in DC, which includes taking drug dealers, gang members and criminal aliens off city streets.”
Here, in Mount Pleasant, this now includes taking people, speculatively, from their vehicles on their way to work.
Twenty minutes later, whistles punctuated another moment of tension up the road.
Whistles are a new community tactic to alert people that ICE agents are in the area. Other innovative tactics include using the Waze Satnav system to report “icy streets” – in August.
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On 16th Street, a small group of locals – commuters and local business owners among them – had gathered around a car with blacked-out windows. They had identified ICE agents inside.
An officer from the city’s Metropolitan Police arrived and asked what the commotion was about. The crowd told him about the ICE agents. He looked into the car, nodded, and retreated. He, too, was then jeered.
Read more:
The flashpoint in Trump’s deportations blitz
‘This is not what we’re about’
In these neighbourhoods of overwhelmingly Democratic, left-leaning Washington DC, the mood feels edgy; not a tipping point, but creeping towards one, for sure.
“I don’t feel safer, I feel more policed,” one woman said.
A day later, a few streets away, another raid. Officers were staged at the entrance to an apartment block. Heavily armed, they appeared to be from various agencies and the city police too.
“I’m sick, this is not this country, this is not what we’re about. We’re a quiet community. It’s unbelievable we’ve come to this, unbelievable,” a woman of retirement age told me as she watched the commotion.
‘They are brutalising people’
When questioned, the officers wouldn’t confirm what their operation was about, but no one was detained and in the end they were literally shouted out of the street by locals. The anger was visceral.
“I’ve lived here for 47 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” another woman said.
“They are occupying the city and our neighbourhoods. They are brutalising people, they are taking people for no reason. We don’t want them here. This is a Donald Trump dominance performance.”
It is more than a performance, though.
If this is the plan for Democrat-run cities across the country, well then the weeks ahead look divisive indeed.
