Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s latest budget proposal includes a provision to expand the ability of local police to assist with deportations, marking her latest shift away from the district’s sanctuary city policies. 

Inserted into Washington, D.C.’s 2026 budget proposal, released Tuesday, is a request to repeal a law banning police from assisting federal immigration authorities in carrying out deportations. If Bowser’s request is granted, district police would be given expanded authorities to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies to target illegal immigrants. 

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Current law prohibits the district from inquiring about a detained person’s immigration status or releasing them to ICE. The district also does not allow ICE to interview suspects in local police custody without first obtaining a court order.

The mayor’s proposal to expand cooperation with ICE signals a reversal from her previous stance on sanctuary cities. 

In 2019, she proclaimed that Washington, D.C., was a “proud sanctuary city, and we are committed to protecting the rights of all our immigrant families in the face of these disturbing threats.” 

But just a few weeks into the Trump administration, Bowser softened her tone as the White House has targeted cities and states accommodating illegal immigrants. President Donald Trump is viewed as having a particular leverage over the district, whose prized home rule status has been questioned by him and some Republican members of Congress.

On Feb. 21, the mayor said she would no longer call the district a sanctuary city because she believed it was “misleading to suggest to anyone that if you are violating immigration laws, that this is a place where you can violate immigration laws.”

In March, revelations surfaced that Bowser had removed a page from the district’s website highlighting it as a “sanctuary city.” 

Her backpedaling on the matter came in the face of threats from Trump that the federal government would take over her “horribly run” district, and the administration’s warning that transportation funding to sanctuary cities could be cut.

In recent months, Bowser has worked toward building a friendly relationship with the president as she fights to protect home rule and implement other priorities for the fiscally challenged city.

Her latest move assuaging the Trump administration’s concerns about sanctuary havens comes as the White House has vowed to triple the number of arrests made by ICE carrying out Trump’s deportation effort.

Those efforts have already spread to the district, where ICE began targeting restaurants earlier this month in a search for illegal immigrants working at local businesses.

BOWSER TRIES TO ASSUAGE TRUMP DC CONCERNS TO KEEP HOME RULE THREATS AT BAY

However, expanding the ability of local police to work with ICE to target migrants, as Bowser has now proposed, would lend more meat to the administration’s deportation effort.

The Washington Examiner reached out to Bowser’s office for comment but did not receive a response.