Washington, D.C., resident Tyler DeSue woke up tired and craving breakfast Saturday morning, so he did what many people in that situation would do: He used Uber Eats to put in an order for burritos.
When his driver took longer than usual, DeSue checked the app and noticed something seemed wrong — the delivery driver’s GPS location had stopped short of his address. He went outside to look for him.
“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 said in an interview. “It was my driver by himself and, like, nine different officers all wearing different uniforms. … Most of them had face coverings on.”
When DeSue went to investigate, the driver — whose name appeared on the food app as “Sidi” — was being questioned, first about his vehicle’s registration and then about his immigration status, he said.
“You’re gonna come with us, you’re gonna come with us today,” a masked agent can be heard telling Sidi in video that DeSue recorded and provided to NBC News.
“Can you tell me in Arabic, please?” Sidi says, adding that he did not understand what was being said and that he was nervous.
One of the agents, wearing a vest emblazoned “POLICE HSI” — short for Homeland Security Investigations, a part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — replies that they do not have an Arabic translator. The men then cuff Sidi’s hands, waist and feet before they put him in an unmarked car. DeSue said he has since reported the incident to Uber.
NBC News has not been able to verify the driver’s full name, nationality or location, and Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The incident is one of several arrests of delivery drivers recorded by eyewitnesses across the Washington area that have gone viral since the Trump administration took over law enforcement in the nation’s capital last week.
The videos, scattered across social media and shared among D.C. delivery driver chat groups, are having a chilling effect on the drivers themselves. Some of them have chosen to stop making deliveries in the city.
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 who did not want to be named told NBC News in a voice message in Spanish.
On Sunday afternoon, DeSue said, an area where 15 to 20 delivery drivers typically would be parked out front of his home looking at their phones for their next orders was an empty lot.
“I haven’t seen a driver anywhere in the last two days,” he said.
Some other D.C. residents have noticed the dwindling presence of delivery drivers, as well.
“The number of people who come to pick up orders has diminished,” said Clarissa Vasquez, who works at a restaurant in the Columbia Heights neighborhood. “We are at 4% of the people who come to pick up food.”
Last Thursday, Vasquez witnessed and recorded the arrest of a delivery driver named Josue Mercedes Franco Cerros, who she said would often come by the restaurant to pick up deliveries.
“He was in front of the restaurant when I see that there are two policemen and they have him,” Vasquez said. “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, a Honduran national, was eventually taken away by law enforcement. His bike was loaded on a truck with the logo of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department on it, according to Vasquez and video obtained by NBC News. Almost a day later, Cerros appeared on the ICE detainee locator database in ICE custody in Virginia, where he remained Monday evening.
Veronica Gonzalez, a friend of Cerros’, said he had been living in the area for at least 10 years and had worked delivery during the day and at a local restaurant at night.
“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.’”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the detentions of Cerros and Sidi or to a question about whether the detentions of delivery drivers like them are part of a coordinated effort to stop and check the immigration statuses of delivery drivers. The Metropolitan Police Department referred questions to the mayor’s office, which did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Atenas Estrada, a deputy program director with the nonprofit Amica Center for Immigrant Rights in Washington, said that the center is also aware of similar reports about delivery drivers and that such instances can contribute to fear within both undocumented and documented immigrant communities.
“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,” Estrada said.
As for Tyler DeSue, who has since made a series of TikTok videos about Sidi’s arrest, he has decided to temporarily stop 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.
