As a Councilmember, Miguel will support proven tools to combat violence in our neighborhoods and bolster upstream interventions to prevent violence in the first place. He will also work to reestablish trust between the community and MPD after the federal intervention — and refocus MPD on community-oriented policing.

Public Safety Is Built on Mutual Trust

Public trust in our police department (MPD) has seriously eroded since the federal intrusion on our autonomy. As a Councilmember, Miguel will be clear-eyed about the fact that this loss of trust undermines everyone’s safety.

Step one is to rededicate ourselves to transparency and accountability. That’s why Miguel led dozens of ANC Commissioners in calling on the DC Council to hold an oversight hearing on MPD’s policies and practices with respect to immigration enforcement. Miguel believes strongly that no operation involving MPD should include federal agents who conceal their identities or their agency affiliations, and no MPD personnel should take part in operations that lack clear legal authority and rigorous oversight.

However, the federal intervention is only the most recent source of tension between the community and MPD. We need to address deeper structural issues with policing in order to achieve lasting results:

• MPD is committed to “community policing,” but it has entirely abandoned its legal obligation to convene a community policing working group and publish a report on community policing every two years. Community policing means working proactively in partnership with the community to build strong relationships and collaboratively prevent crime. It means sending officers out to form real bonds of trust with neighbors, families, schools, and local businesses. We see far too little of this work in today’s MPD. Business owners on U Street have told Miguel that they’ve never met their local beat cops — but they have met National Guardsmen and federal agents. That is deeply wrong. As a Councilmember, Miguel will put pressure on the chief to restore the community policing working group and give it the tools to do a serious job. Miguel will work to get officers out of their cars and meaningfully interacting with the community, on the basis of mutual respect and trust-building.

• The conversation about police reform in DC is effectively dormant, despite the fact that the Police Reform Commission put a number of thoughtful proposals on the table more than four years ago, which deserve consideration. In particular, the commission advocated for a harm-reduction approach and, yes, more community policing. Reform is all the more urgent now that the federal surge has exposed so many of our neighbors — especially communities of color, our trans neighbors, and immigrant residents — to excessive, intrusive surveillance. As a Councilmember, Miguel will lead the charge to revive the most promising proposals for effective reform.

• MPD’s system of Citizens Advisory Councils (CAC) is meant to provide a conduit from the community directly into the police department, but they operate very unevenly and generally do not provide the kind of forum that other cities have achieved through independent oversight boards, for example. Miguel will work to evaluate the CACs and determine whether they can benefit from reform, whether a new mechanism is required, or both.

Violence Interruption Saves Lives

Violence interruption (VI) is the District’s approach to preventing interpersonal conflict from turning into physical violence. It takes many forms, operating at the school, neighborhood, ward, and citywide levels.

As a Commissioner, Miguel sponsored two resolutions calling on the Council to maintain (or, better yet, increase) the District’s investment in VI programs from 2025 to 2026. Unfortunately, the Council chose to decrease overall funding for VI when it closed the Attorney General’s Cure the Streets program and concentrated all VI programming in the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (ONSE). The unified approach under ONSE is promising: one of its goals is to move from a 10-week to a 10-month commitment to at-risk clients, expanding from crime prevention to include work on wellness and employment. Successful implementation, though, will require consistent budgetary support and close Council oversight.

As a Councilmember, Miguel will bolster VI programs, while insisting that investments be based on rigorous research and data analysis. Miguel also believes in supporting VI at all levels, especially the peacebuilding programs in schools, which build on cognitive behavioral therapy and other approaches to teach young people to defuse conflict instead of reaching for weapons. Our Ward 1 schools should be learning from the success of peace programs at schools in other wards, and building interlinkages between school programs and “adult”/neighborhood-based VI programs. Miguel knows that DC has a tremendously dedicated and experienced VI community and he will work to provide adequate resources to scale up its efforts.

We Are Not Safe Unless All of Us Are Safe

The federal intrusion in DC has exposed us — especially our immigrant, Black, and brown neighbors — to increased scrutiny, violence, and injustice. The Trump Administration has empowered ICE and other agencies to act with a Rambo attitude of impunity. They have caused real and permanent harm. None of this should have ever happened. As the child of an immigrant family and a former immigration professional, Miguel knows how damaging, how counterproductive, and how un-American all of this is.

That’s why Miguel has:

• founded the Home Rule Caucus, a group of 75+ ANC Commissioners from across the District who coordinate on DC autonomy issues, including lobbying the DC Council and Congress.

• rallied ANCs across the city to push for an end to the federal militarization of DC. Miguel led the call for ICE and other federal agents to stop concealing their identities and wearing deceptive uniforms that say “POLICE.” ICE agents are not our police. These are darkly authoritarian practices that instill fear and complicate legal accountability for the families of detained people. Miguel coordinated dozens of ANCs to pass resolutions calling on Congress to end these practices, and he worked with Free DC to deliver those resolutions to key offices on Capitol Hill.

• advocated before the DC Council for the preservation and expansion of our Sanctuary Values law to close loopholes that have allowed MPD to work alongside ICE and other federal agencies.

• worked closely with Free DC to provide Know Your Rights (KYR) training and outreach in English and Spanish to vulnerable populations in his district every week.

As a Councilmember, Miguel will be undaunted in conducting oversight to understand precisely how our agencies — MPD, the Mayor’s office, the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice, and the Office of Federal and Regional Affairs — are performing and coordinating. The decision of the DC Council to not hold an MPD oversight hearing last fall was dereliction of duty. In the absence of Council oversight, Miguel invited the Deputy Mayor to his ANC to answer questions at a public meeting. Miguel asked important questions for the first time — including whether MPD was operating under any formal agreement with the federal government, what progress had been made in removing Homeland Security agencies from the federal Task Force, and whether MPD had offered federal agencies access to its radio frequencies. These were pressing community concerns that had had no other opportunity to be answered in public. That is the type of rigorous oversight that Miguel will champion on the Council.

The real solution to our vulnerability, of course, is statehood and the full representation in Congress that we deserve as Americans. That will always remain our North Star and our most fervent demand. It is a civil-rights and a human-rights imperative, period.

Safety While Walking, Biking, and Driving

DC has been working for years to protect drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists under Vision Zero and other programs, yet our injury and fatality statistics have remained stubbornly high. Thankfully, after near record-high fatalities in 2023 and 2024, we finally saw a significant drop in 2025. We cannot reverse progress. New initiatives like the STEER Act, which allows our attorney general to prosecute the most dangerous drivers, must be preserved and built upon. As a Councilmember, Miguel will ensure that DC can enforce its traffic laws, including with out-of-state drivers. The DC Automated Safety Camera (ASC) Program helps us identify reckless drivers and should not be the object of the whims of Members of Congress who want to turn DC into a lawless Wild West.

Miguel has been a consistent advocate for public transit, cyclists, and pedestrians. He has delivered a brand-new Capital Bikeshare station in his ANC district, and expanded others, to alleviate the shortage of bikes during peak commuting hours. He has championed the construction of additional bike lanes, especially protected bike lanes, to connect existing cycling infrastructure and provide a consistent, safe experience for bikers. One of Miguel’s advocacy priorities remains a seamless bike lane on 14th Street from Columbia Heights all the way through to downtown. The section from Irving Street to U Street is unmarked, confusing, and downhill: a recipe for disaster. This stretch of 14th Street also has dangerously ineffective pedestrian crossings, missing signage, and inefficient bus stops. Miguel has worked with DDOT engineers and neighbors — including conducting in-person safety walks — to elevate these as components of the upcoming redesign (Bus Priority Project) for 14th Street. As a Councilmember, he will ensure that this project is funded and that it comprehensively achieves the community’s goals for pedestrian, cyclist, and driver safety.