The Long, Bitter Fight to Get ICE Out of Dallas

The mayor wants to deepen his city’s collaboration with ICE. The people have other ideas.

By Arman Deendar, The Nation

Last November, Azael Alvarez was driving around a neighborhood in southeastern Dallas when he noticed what appeared to be a group of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers surrounding a car at a gas station. Alvarez, an organizer with the group El Movimiento DFW (Dallas–Fort Worth), had been heavily involved in the fight against ICE in the city since the start of the second Trump administration.

As soon as he saw the masked agents, Alvarez pulled into the station and began recording the interaction. He noticed that a group of Dallas Police Department (DPD) officers was also present. When Alvarez asked the officers if they could verify that the masked men were from ICE, they said, “We don’t know [who they are] either.” As the suspected ICE agents detained at least one person, Alvarez asked the agents if they had a warrant, while DPD officers stood by watching. As police were driving off, an officer shouted, “Get a job!” in his direction.

The incident came in the midst of an ongoing debate about the relationship between local Dallas law enforcement and ICE. For the better part of a year, organizers, residents, and elected officials have called on the city’s leadership for accountability, transparency, and action in the face of the Trump administration’s pervasive mass-deportation drive.

The debate reached a fever pitch less than three weeks before the gas station incident, when Eric Johnson, the Republican mayor of Dallas, ordered a special meeting of two city hall committees to discuss whether the DPD should enter into an official agreement with ICE, under a federal program known as 287(g). (Johnson, whose lax approach to his job led the The Dallas Morning News to dub him “the mayor of Somewhere Else,” didn’t show up to the meeting.)