House votes to nullify D.C.'s ‘sanctuary city' law

Washington Post

12-06-2025

House lawmakers voted Thursday to nullify D.C.'s 'sanctuary city' law and mandate the city's cooperation with federal immigration authorities, at a time when the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration has spread fear and anxiety across the region's immigrant communities.
The vote was the third this week in which bipartisan House lawmakers advanced a repeal of a D.C. policy, all three of which must still head to the Senate for consideration. It was also the second bill involving immigrants in D.C., underscoring House Republicans' willingness to carry out President Donald Trump's priorities in the one place where they have direct power over local policy, the District, and on one of Trump's top agenda items: immigration enforcement.
'We are going to, by God, require that our nation's capital comply with our nation's federal laws,' said Rep. Clay Higgins (R-Louisiana), who led the bill that would effectively nullify D.C.'s Sanctuary Values Amendment Act.
D.C. officials maintain that they already comply with federal immigration law and lawful requests when federal authorities present a warrant or judicial order and that they don't expect the legislation to cause any significant change. D.C.'s Sanctuary Values Amendment Act placed guardrails on cooperation with the feds but does not refuse it.
This year in Congress has been among the most tumultuous for D.C., particularly after Congress slashed the city's 2025 budget by over $1 billion. Despite a unanimous vote to fix that cut in the Senate and support from Trump to fix it as well, House GOP leadership has not moved to restore the funds, instead taking up a steady drumbeat of bills intervening in D.C. policy. The House also voted this week in favor of repealing both D.C.'s law allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections and another that prohibits the police union from bargaining on officer discipline.
On Thursday, House lawmakers voted 224-194 to mandate that D.C. cooperate with immigration enforcement, such as requiring the D.C. jail to comply with requests to detain someone or provide information about a person's immigration status. Eleven Democrats joined Republicans in the vote.
Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Massachusetts), who led debate against the bill for Democrats and made an impassioned plea for D.C. home rule, said the District does comply with federal immigration law — officials simply do not go out of their way to use local resources to do favors for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
'Mayors, police chiefs, sheriffs and local leaders across the country have made clear that the way to combat violent crime is allowing local police to do their jobs of ensuring public safety in their own communities, not commandeering local police to spend limited time and resources rounding up and detaining nonviolent immigrants who pose no threat,' he said.
Immigration has been a highly sensitive issue even among local officials in D.C. — Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) had already proposed repealing D.C.'s sanctuary city law in her 2026 budget proposal, drawing outcry from immigrant rights advocates. The mayor has for months been seeking to avoid inflaming tensions with the Trump administration given D.C.'s unique vulnerability to federal intervention; Congress oversees the city under the Constitution. Trump had threatened consequences for any cities that have similar laws or resist immigration enforcement, part of a nationwide effort to ramp up enforcement, and included the District on a list among dozens of localities across the country.
Bowser has stopped calling D.C. a 'sanctuary city,' saying it wrongly suggests the District can protect undocumented immigrants from deportation — a stark contrast from her posture during Trump's first term, when she advertised D.C. as a sanctuary city in an apparent resistance to Trump's immigration agenda. The D.C. Council passed legislation in 2020 writing that policy into law. Unless ICE has a judicial order, the law prohibits local officials from cooperating with ICE, including to detain a person in jail past their release date for ICE, inquire about their immigration status or allow federal immigration authorities access to people in the jail or information about their release date and location.
Higgins's bill would mandate that type of cooperation — as long as ICE makes lawful requests.
Higgins, who has a law enforcement background, initially included an exception in the bill that would allow D.C. to resist cooperation with ICE if the person ICE inquired about was a crime victim or witness. The provision apparently sought to assuage concerns that undocumented immigrants may be deterred from cooperating with police if they fear police will give them up to ICE.
But Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, included an amendment to remove that exemption. A spokesman for the committee said the Republican conference's position has 'shifted,' explaining that the party became concerned that the exemption could be 'abused by local officials to try and tie the hands of ICE officials enforcing federal law.'
'The thought was the exception in the original bill was overly broad,' Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) added during a hearing Monday. 'Someone could claim to witness a speeding ticket, and police would withhold their information from ICE.'
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) argued the amendment suggested that Republicans do not care about public safety in D.C. — 'deportation is all that they care about.'
'This is shameful,' McGovern said, 'not only on a human level but also from a law enforcement perspective. This would discourage the victims of crimes like sexual assault or robbery from coming forward or discourage witnesses from coming to the police to help solve those crimes.'
The D.C. Council and D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb (D) urged Congress not to repeal the law and leave law enforcement decisions to D.C. police. Bowser did not join those letters but, asked for her position on the bill, told reporters she opposes all congressional interference in D.C. policy.
Abel Nuñez, executive director of CARECEN, an organization aiding immigrants in the D.C. area, said the sanctuary city law was always more of a signal than a policy that had caused significant change — as would be its repeal. The law, he said, was never about directing D.C. police to 'fight ICE,' since police and the jail would still comply with any lawful orders; it was about making people feel safe to call the police or cooperate in investigations.
'It's important for the sanctuary bill to remain because it's a symbolic measure of a city telling all of its residents, 'Look, we don't care about your status. What we care about is public safety,'' he said.
Trump already pushed the District to do more to cooperate with federal immigration authorities through his March executive order to make the District 'safe and beautiful,' which included provisions to monitor D.C.'s status as a sanctuary city and 'maximize' immigration enforcement resources, including through cooperation with local authorities.
In a letter to the federal task force that Trump's order created, Bowser said that D.C. police comply 'with all court orders' but that police would not hold arrestees in jail beyond initial processing, which takes several hours. She added that for more than two decades the Metropolitan Police Department's policy 'has been to not ask individuals about their immigration status.'
'As law enforcement, MPD knows that when there are groups of people who hesitate to report crime to the police, they often become targets for serious crime,' Bowser wrote. 'Allowing that to flourish makes everyone in the city unsafe.'
Officials in the mayor's office reiterated that D.C. police would not begin asking people about their immigration status should the bill pass.
Immigrant rights advocates protested outside the Wilson Building last week against Bowser's decision to propose a repeal of the city's sanctuary city law as part of her budget, while figures including the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and leadership of the local Service Employees International Union condemned the mayor's decision, the latter calling her 'complicit with Trump.'
Bowser told reporters that she believed D.C.'s Sanctuary Values Amendment Act was 'misnamed and misplaced' and said she was questioning whether it should have been codified in law; she signed it into law in 2020. 'I think this is a good time to repeal that and work with the council on what we really need our local law to say,' she said.
She noted that the city's policy for years was to not hold suspected undocumented immigrants in jail for ICE longer than 48 hours or without a valid warrant after her predecessor, Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D), issued a mayoral order laying out that policy. Bowser said that she believed a mayor's order was a better home for the policy and that Gray's was never rescinded.
Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) said he would 'probably not support' Bowser's repeal proposal. He added that if federal immigration authorities present a lawful judicial order, 'then we will of course cooperate. And I think that's a completely defensible position.'
Prospects for the bills in the Senate are unclear given the Senate does not always prioritize D.C. legislation. D.C. shadow senator Ankit Jain said he was actively working to shore up Democratic opposition to the efforts, which must still face the Senate filibuster. Seven Democrats would have to join Republicans to overcome it.
Jenny Gathright contributed to this report.