On a recent Saturday morning, Washington, D.C., resident Tyler DeSue did what countless hungry city dwellers do: he opened his Uber Eats app and ordered a breakfast burrito. But when his food failed to arrive, DeSue noticed something strange—the driver’s GPS location had frozen just a few blocks away. Curious and a bit concerned, he stepped outside, only to find his delivery driver, known as "Sidi" on the app, surrounded by a swarm of officers in various uniforms, some masked, and all bearing the insignia of different federal agencies.
"I stepped into the street, I looked down and see lights in the direction, like police lights, in the direction of where my driver was," DeSue recalled in an interview with NBC News. "It was my driver by himself and, like, nine different officers all wearing different uniforms. ... Most of them had face coverings on." The officers, including some from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), questioned Sidi first about his moped’s registration. When that checked out, the focus quickly shifted to his immigration status. The driver, whose first language is Arabic, struggled to understand the rapid-fire questions. "Can you tell me in Arabic, please?" Sidi pleaded, visibly nervous. The agents, lacking a translator, responded that they could not help. Then, with little ceremony, they cuffed his hands, waist, and feet, and placed him in an unmarked car.
This was no isolated incident. According to reporting by NBC News and other outlets, the Trump administration’s recent federal takeover of Washington, D.C.’s law enforcement—ostensibly to crack down on violent crime—has led to a wave of delivery drivers being stopped, questioned, and in some cases, detained by federal agents. The operation, which began August 14, 2025, saw the deployment of not only the FBI, DEA, HSI, and ATF, but also the National Guard, in a move that many residents found more unsettling than reassuring.
For delivery drivers, the impact was immediate and chilling. Videos of arrests, like the one DeSue captured, have spread rapidly across social media and among driver chat groups, sparking widespread fear. Some drivers have simply stopped working. "It has been five days since working, looking at what to do. And, well, closed down here waiting for things to pass, because I don’t know what to do," a D.C.-area delivery driver told NBC News in a voice message, requesting anonymity. By August 18, DeSue reported that the area outside his home, usually teeming with 15 to 20 drivers awaiting orders, was an empty lot. "I haven’t seen a driver anywhere in the last two days," he said.
The effects have rippled out to local businesses as well. Columbia Heights, a neighborhood known for its vibrant street life and bustling restaurants, has quieted dramatically. Clarissa Vasquez, who works at a restaurant in the area, noted a stark drop in foot traffic. "The number of people who come to pick up orders has diminished," Vasquez told NBC News. "We are at 4% of the people who come to pick up food." That’s a 96 percent drop by her estimate—an economic punch felt by restaurants already navigating a difficult climate.
Vasquez herself witnessed another arrest last Thursday. Delivery driver Josue Mercedes Franco Cerros, a Honduran national who had lived in the area for at least a decade and worked multiple jobs, was detained without explanation right in front of her restaurant. "He was in front of the restaurant when I see that there are two policemen and they have him," Vasquez recalled. "They didn’t give a single explanation. The police would tell him to lift up his hair because they wanted to take a photo. The guy was nervous, he was in shock, crying, of course, because he was working, and for the police to arrive all of a sudden, anyone would get nervous." Cerros’s bike was loaded onto a truck marked with the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department logo. By the next day, he appeared in ICE custody in Virginia, according to NBC News.
For Cerros’s friend, Veronica Gonzalez, the arrest was a harsh wake-up call. "He never thought that something would happen," Gonzalez said. "Because all that we saw in the news, I said, ‘Son, you have to be careful.’ And he would say, ‘No, no, I don’t think anything will happen.’" Now, with Cerros detained, Gonzalez and others in the community are left to navigate a new landscape of fear and uncertainty.
The Trump administration has justified the federalization of D.C.’s police forces and the deployment of federal agents as a necessary step to curb violent crime. At a press conference, President Trump declared, "People who haven’t gone out to dinner in Washington D.C. in two years are going out to dinner." Yet, as reporting from NBC News and other outlets makes clear, the reality on the ground is starkly different. Restaurant reservations in the city dropped by 25 percent in the days following the federal takeover. The once-bustling Irving Street corridor in Columbia Heights is now eerily quiet, and the city’s food delivery infrastructure—so vital to residents and workers alike—has been thrown into disarray.
Community advocates warn that the crackdown is having a broader, more insidious effect. Atenas Estrada, deputy program director for the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, told NBC Washington, "What I am seeing, personally, is widespread fear amongst community members. People, you know, making decisions or avoiding places that they perhaps would not otherwise avoid or leave." Both documented and undocumented immigrants are changing their routines, steering clear of areas where they fear being stopped or questioned by law enforcement.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has so far declined to clarify whether these detentions are part of a coordinated effort to target delivery drivers’ immigration status. The D.C. Metropolitan Police Department has referred questions to the mayor’s office, which has not yet responded to media inquiries. Uber, too, has yet to comment on the arrest of Sidi, despite DeSue’s report to the company.
For many D.C. residents, the events of the past week have prompted a painful reevaluation of everyday routines. DeSue, for his part, has stopped using delivery apps out of concern for the drivers. "I made a video on it, about, you know, stopping using Uber Eats, DoorDash, and I know a lot of friends who stopped using it," he said. The sense of safety and normalcy that delivery drivers once provided has been replaced by anxiety and, for some, outright avoidance.
As the city waits for answers from officials and the federal government, one thing is clear: the crackdown intended to make D.C. “safer” has instead left many residents and workers feeling more vulnerable than ever. The city’s once-thriving street life—marked by the steady hum of delivery mopeds and the comings and goings of restaurant patrons—has been replaced by uncertainty and silence, a testament to the far-reaching consequences of policies that, whatever their stated intent, have profoundly shaken the rhythms of daily life in the nation’s capital.
