Angry residents of a Washington high-rise apartment building gathered as federal agents, backed by Metropolitan Police Department officers, swooped in to encircle a delivery driver last week.
The armed agents with tactical vests arrived first. They were joined by District police officers and a truck brimming with the sorts of mopeds and scooters used by delivery drivers. Soon, the driver’s moped — representing another livelihood of a person at the bottom of Silicon Valley’s pecking order — was added to the pile.
Residents pleading for the driver’s release were ignored. As the police van drove away, one resident shouted at the driver, “Fuck you!” The officer lowered his window and spat in the resident’s direction.
Scenes like this have become common in a city under siege by President Donald Trump’s administration, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and a federalized police force. The delivery drivers are only the latest targets of Trump’s attempt to turn the city into a test run for deploying troops and federal agents to cities that oppose his administration.
The delivery drivers’ whizzing motorcycles, mopeds, and electric bicycles filled city streets just a few weeks before, but now advocates say they’ve become a top ICE target.
Hard numbers about the crackdown are hard to come by. In a statement, the police department linked the arrests of delivery drivers to an operation that dates back to last year — without acknowledging ICE’s new role. The targeting of delivery drivers appears to be widespread, however, and has led to a dramatic decline in the number of visible delivery drivers on the streets.
In stark contrast to Trump’s first term, when the major ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft both came out against the government’s Muslim ban, the big players in the food-delivery space have been quiet about the administration’s attack on their workforce.
Advocates for immigrants and low-wage workers said the companies owe it to their drivers to speak out.
“I would hope that every employer in the District is not only finding ways to protect their staff, but they are also speaking out and speaking to their elected folks about how unhappy they are,” said Michael Lukens, executive director of Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, which represents people facing deportation in the D.C. area. “Profit cannot be paramount over people.”
A “Lazy” Tactic
Lukens’s nonprofit has already seen an increase in newly arrested clients, including those who worked as delivery drivers before the federal takeover of D.C.’s police force began August 11.
Videos bear that out. Across D.C., residents have posted videos of police swooping in to arrest delivery drivers. In one scene captured by bystanders on video, a delivery driver emerging from a coffee shop was tackled to the ground and pummeled by masked ICE agents.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, Metro police attempted to tie the recent videos of violent arrests involving ICE to a monthslong operation.
“In response to community complaints about unsafe scooter driving behavior, the Metropolitan Police Department began conducting scooter enforcement in 2024,” the department said. “Since Operation Ride Right started, we have impounded approximately 1,249 scooters, made 139 arrests, and issued 1,258 Notice of Infractions.”
The operation predated the Trump administration and what the statement left out was ICE’s new, heavy-handed role. The agency has specifically been partnering with the city’s police officers to check drivers’ immigration status, the Washington Post reported last week.
ICE has zeroed in on delivery drivers, Lukens believes, because they are easy prey.
“It’s very clear ICE is targeting delivery drivers because they’re outdoors, which makes it easier to do warrantless arrests. It’s a population that ICE is aware is very immigrant-heavy. And frankly, it’s easy for ICE to go after them,” Lukens said. “It is, to me, a very lazy way for ICE to operate.”
In Washington, many delivery drivers are recently arrived Venezuelan immigrants, putting them even more in harm’s way because ICE is fast-tracking deportations for people who have not been in the U.S. for long.
“Given the government’s racial profiling, and profiling of people from Venezuela and Central America as potential gang members,” Lukens said, “that is also problematic.”
The Sound of Silence
The street corners where drivers once gathered to await new orders have emptied out since the joint police–ICE crackdown began.
As authorities round up their work force, the big players in the world of Silicon Valley-developed delivery apps have largely remained silent. Three of the biggest — Uber, Grubhub, and DoorDash — did not respond to requests for comment.
That silence disappointed but did not surprise Katie Wells, the co-author of a book about the rise of Uber.
The app companies have long relied on exploiting low-wage workers, Wells said. A core premise of the apps’ business models is that their workers are independent contractors, not direct employees. Even before the crackdown, delivery drivers faced the physical risk of accidents on the road and the economic risk of account deactivations with little support from the companies.
“The violence, the stress of getting there on time, and the indignities of being deactivated without a single human to call for help — it makes the jobs very difficult,” said Wells, who is the director of research at Groundwork Collaborative, a left-leaning think tank that opposes excessive corporate power.
Organizing efforts have made slow progress given the fragmented nature of the workforce, with the exception of groups such as Los Deliveristas Unidos in New York City. The app companies have deployed armies of lobbyists to fight back against attempts to regulate the industry through minimum pay guarantees or pay transparency rules.
In many cases, immigrant delivery drivers rent time on the apps from people who are legally authorized to work in the U.S., according to Sergio Avedian, a rideshare driver, industry consultant, and senior contributor at the Rideshare Guy.
The people whose names are on the account sometimes fail to turn over the agreed-upon split of the earnings to the drivers, according to Avedian.
For years, the app industry has relied on undocumented workers to meet the demand for its always-on, nearly-instant delivery services, Avedian said. But it has made few efforts to ensure that they are being treated well.
“Capital doesn’t care about fairness,” Avedian said. “But as far as these immigrants, my heart goes out to them. They get screwed every possible way.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
