Videos show impact of Trumps crackdown in one Washington DC neighbourhood

Residents in a Washington DC neighbourhood with one of the citys largest Latino populations say they have seen a surge in immigration raids since the Trump administration launched its crime crackdown.

"People are walking around scared," one resident, who wanted to remain anonymous, said. "Ive never seen the streets so empty."

Videos posted on social media in the last week show arrests and raids - along with protests by locals - in the Columbia Heights area.

More than 1,000 arrests have been made across the US capital since the crackdown started on 11 August - nearly half were of suspected illegal immigrants, according to the White House.

BBC Verify has reviewed more than a dozen videos filmed in Columbia Heights and spoken to people who live there to assess the impact on the neighbourhood.

One video of two men being seized by law enforcement officers was posted on Instagram by a local journalist on Thursday morning.

In the footage, a number on a distinctive building can be seen. We used this to pin point the location to a road in Columbia Heights - about two miles north of the White House - and headed there to find out more about what happened.

We met a woman who witnessed the incident. She said she didnt know the two men but showed us several videos she had filmed, including one she live-streamed on Facebook at 07:39 that morning.

It shows two men in a red car, surrounded by a group of nine officers - some with "police federal officer" on their vests, some wearing masks.

The officers then smash two of the car windows before dragging the men out, forcing one of them to the ground and putting him in handcuffs.

Both men are walked to an unmarked car and driven away, while the woman filming shouts in Spanish: "They are fighting for their lives… They broke the windows, dont go out, dont go out."

Several other onlookers can be heard chanting "ICE go home", another shouts "you should be so ashamed". Someone names one of the men as "Eric Lopez".

When we arrived, we saw the car being towed away by a man who gave us a number for someone who he said knew the arrested men.

We contacted the person and he texted back to say the men were from Guatemala, in the US illegally, and one had a wife and son. He called them "good kids" and claimed they "do not have a bad record in anything".

BBC Verify asked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for more details.

A spokesperson said ICE agents had "arrested Erickson Sebastian Lopez-Castanon, an illegal alien who was in the car".

They added: "The target of this operation was Darwin Arahely Lopez-Castanon, a criminal illegal alien who has been charged with felony domestic violence. This criminal illegal alien from Guatemala was previously deported twice before he illegally entered the country a third time."

They said the officers had used "the minimum amount of force necessary".

The woman who filmed the videos wanted to remain anonymous but invited us into her home nearby. She said her family was originally from Central America but were now legal US citizens.

Her daughter, who also wished to remain anonymous, claimed the majority of Latino people in the area were undocumented and had become increasingly anxious over the last two weeks.

"I was born and raised here in Washington DC," she said. "My parents fortunately have documents… But Im always on the edge thinking where are they going to hit next? Is it going to be us, even though we have documents?"

"Even people with documents are hiding because theyre scared."

She told us her uncles house across the street was targeted by federal agents last week.

"I walked out and saw a bunch of cops outside the house. They were knocking and asking my uncle to open the door, they werent saying who they were looking for. They werent showing any documentation."

"We called my uncle" she says, "I was like, dont open the door… after maybe 20, 30 minutes, they end up leaving. But they were so afraid."

The uncle joined us and showed us his documentation, which he says he waved to the agents from his window to prove that he is in the US legally.

He said federal authorities were also patrolling a local park where people play football.

The number of people turning up to play had dropped from roughly 50 to around 15, as many were undocumented and afraid of being detained, he said.

He showed us a picture of a large group of agents gathered near the park.

Several videos also show officers with FBI and Homeland Security markings, as well as local police, surrounding another property on Sunday evening.

Locals can be heard shouting "get out of our neighbourhood".

We located the videos to a street two blocks away.

A photographer who sent us one of the videos said he asked officers why they were there, and one told him it was due to an "exploitation case".

The FBI wouldnt confirm this, but told BBC Verify: "The FBI Washington Field Office conducted court-authorised law enforcement activity at that location on Sunday, August 24."

In May, Trumps senior advisor Stephen Miller said he had set a goal of "a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day" - as the administration tries to deliver on the presidents campaign pledge of the "largest mass deportation in history".

"When you look at the type of people who are being arrested [in Washington DC] it seems like they are just trying to fill their deportation quotas," argues Austin Rose, an immigration lawyer.

He believes many will have tried to claim asylum in the US so would already be known to the authorities, making it easier to track them down.

Overall, BBC Verify reviewed 15 videos of incidents involving federal officers in Columbia Heights.

As of 26 August, a total of 169 crimes had been reported this year in the local area around the street we visited, according to DC Metropolitan Polices crime map.

​​There have been some serious crimes reported in the wider Columbia Heights area - including a suspected shooting earlier this year.

All of the ten people we spoke to on the street said they had felt safe there before the crime crackdown.

"I brought my mom here and she was like, this place feels way more like a neighbourhood than where we used to live… But since the crackdown, it feels less like a neighbourhood and more like a police state," said Winnie Litchfield, who has been living there for a year.

"I stepped out at 06:50 in the morning to go to work and I saw two men arresting a man in a car. They were surrounding him, pinning him, putting handcuffs on him. I stopped and the guy looked at me and shook his head," she said.

Aliaina Hooks, another resident who has lived in the area for three years, said the streets have become much quieter in recent weeks.

"Theres usually a lot of Latino vendors that are set up on the sidewalk when Im walking out of the gym in the morning… but today I was coming home and there was actually no-one set out," she told us.

We asked DHS how many people have been arrested in Columbia Heights and whether the area is being targeted.

A spokesperson said: "We will support the re-establishment of law and order and public safety, so Americans can feel safe in our nations capital."

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