In my 20s, while working as a labor reporter at POLITICO and elsewhere and unionizing, I lived in Mt. Pleasant, a traditional Salvadoran. The old neighborhood is fighting back against ICE in a big way and folks should pay attention and model resistance from it.
The best immigration reporter in DC, Pablo Manriquez of Migrant Insider, is filing dispatches from Mt. Pleasant. I encourage folks to subscribe to his publication Migration Insider now (Pablo's a real shitkicker).
Pablo Manríquez
WASHINGTON — A new viral video has surfaced of an unnamed resident of Mount Pleasant standing toe-to-toe with a pack of plain-clothed agents on a surveillance sting near the “Chinga La Migra” banner that ICE yanked down over the weekend. The clip has been moving fast online since I posted it to X an hour ago.
You might remember ICE’s victory lap from Sunday: a video of masked men tearing down a neighborhood banner and, for reasons still unknown to man or beast, leaving behind a rubber sex toy in the plaza like it was some kind of trophy. By Monday night, the people of Mount Pleasant hung a new banner. I went up there and did my first “man on the street” interview under it. You can watch that here:
Mount Pleasant Stands With Migrants (VIDEO)Pablo Manríquez·Aug 19Read full story
MY TAKE: The truth is, this laid back city is wound tight right now. Last week Donald Trump dumped a fruit cocktail of federal cops into D.C. under the phony pretense of “safety.”
This week, he brought in the National Guard from six states nobody in Washington asked for: West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee.
And as expected, the shitshow has turned into a rolling immigration raid. Car windows smashed. Migrants snatched off mopeds. Families scattered. Bands of shabby-looking agents moving in packs through neighborhoods, refusing to even say which badge they hide behind.
But D.C. isn’t kneeling to Trump. Not in Mount Pleasant. Not on U Street. Not anywhere. The video today shows it plain: One woman, in her own neighborhood, staring down a faceless government that thinks it can make her vanish.
And that’s the part that will stick. Not the agents. Not the masks. Not the dildo left as a punchline nobody laughed at. The story is the look on her unrevealed face. She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t bending.
Republicans can haul in troops from six states, can rip down a banner twice and can play tough guy all you want. But Trump can’t wipe that defiance off her face. And when a city carries that look, agents and officers in the masks don’t stand a chance.
