Families of DC-area immigrant drivers snatched by feds stuck with tow bill

This is a guest piece written by Mel Buer, an independent multimedia journalist covering labor, media, community organizing and immigration in the United States. She currently lives in Los Angeles, CA and writes an independent newsletter, Words About Work.

When their father was pulled over on a Maryland highway and detained by ICE one recent November day, two young daughters were suddenly left without a family income—and saddled with hundreds in impoundment fees. After federal agents took their father from the scene, they left his work truck on the side of the road. But just as quickly as he was taken, so was the car whisked away by a local towing company. 

As Gregory Bovino and scores of federal immigration officers bring their reign of terror to Charlotte, North Carolina—and Los Angeles and Chicago and Portland before it—community members in other areas around the US are still grappling with the federal government’s mass deportation machine. The horrors have manifested in bombastic and obvious ways, but also live in the much smaller details. In the DC area, activists and concerned neighbors have been fielding dozens of reports of working Black and brown men being detained on the parkways in recent weeks, and now a worrying trend is emerging: Authorities pull over a work van or truck, and the driver is taken. Almost immediately the vehicle is towed, leaving little time for neighbors to put the pieces together and impacted families stuck with the bill. Many are left wondering how this system really works. 

According to local community members, immigration enforcement operations have been going at a steady clip on the Baltimore-Washington (B-W) Parkway since at least August, where US Park Police (USPP) have been seen working alongside ICE to pull over drivers and detain them. (USPP has become increasingly visible in immigration enforcement, as The Handbasket previously reported.) The B-W Parkway is a federally-controlled stretch of highway that runs along a 32-mile corridor between Baltimore and Washington DC, and is patrolled by the USPP. Commercial vehicles are not allowed on the parkways, according to USPP, but this came as a surprise to local residents and elected officials. 

“I have never heard of this enforced before,” Montgomery County Council Member Kristin Mink told The Handbasket. “I did not even know that it was a law, and I'm sure nobody else did either, and that's why they've been driving on there,” she said.

“The majority of these people who are detained are Black and brown immigrants,” said Alex Vazquez, National Organizing Director for the immigrant rights organization CASA, told News4 I-Team earlier this month. “A lot of the people do work in construction or plumbing, something that would require a white van or work vehicle.” In past months, community patrol members in Maryland have been able to determine where these stops have happened and done their best to get information that can alert family members and help them retrieve the vehicles. 

“Before we could get to the vehicle, there was a much faster rate of tow trucks coming,” a member of the Beltsville, Maryland community who has been volunteering their time with local community patrols noted. They added, “We had folks on the highway who were driving, and they’d see the vehicle and they’d pull over, and the tow truck immediately showed up.” 

Since November 4, community members have seen drivers from Maryland-based Hannan Towing, at the scene of multiple detainments—including the incident involving the worker with two daughters. They’re 18 and 20 years old and couldn’t afford to pay Hannan the $670 fee to get their father’s work truck out of impound. When local community members were unable to get the fee fully reduced for them, Maryland State Delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk, who represents Prince George’s County, stepped in to try and help. She recalled calling the front desk of Hannan Towing to try and convince them to drop the fees.

“I spoke to him from my heart and explained to him the situation with this family,” Delegate Peña-Melnyk said. “He says ‘Look, we don’t have anything to do with this. We’re a business and we’re just doing our work.’ I said ‘Well, that may be so, and I thank you, but you know it’s not right.’ I said it’s really expensive and people cannot afford it.’” The company ultimately forgave the fees and allowed the family to pick up the vehicle without charge, but Hannan drivers have been seen on the Parkway as recently as Nov 11 towing more vehicles of immigration detainees. 

Hannan Auto and Towing is listed on SAM.gov, a website used to bid on government contracts. They also have a CAO-PAY number, which is a unique identifier assigned to entities who have been awarded contracts with the federal government. It’s unclear the exact nature of Hannan’s contract with USPP, and they have not returned an email request for comment. The National Park Service lists a different tow company, AnA Towing, as the primary servicer for DC-area impoundments and tows on their website. We’ve filed FOIA requests with multiple government agencies, but have not received responses yet.

“What’s really notable about these situations is that these are all work vehicles,” said Councilmember Mink, who was notified of the tows and has been working with local community members to try and help impacted families. “So, they’re targeting breadwinners from these families, and then we have companies that are then trying to extort hundreds of dollars from those same impacted families who have just had a loved one and a breadwinner stolen from them.”

“You can drive down the B-W Parkway and see these work vehicles being pulled over on some days quite consistently,” Councilmember Mink continued. “I’m just thinking, ‘All of these families, they’re losing a family member, and they’re going to get that news alongside the news that they can’t afford to get their work vehicle back or they need to shell out their next month’s rent for it.’”

Since learning of this practice, Councilmember Mink has begun looking at the regulations surrounding this and similar practices to see if the County Council can do something to help affected families. “I’m looking at how we can update our regulations just to make sure that the people who are impacted by ICE are not being then hit with towing fees as a result of any county initiated towing. But the ideal, of course, is for the family of whoever’s vehicle it is to be able to just get that vehicle back without having to deal with a tow company.”

This ongoing practice is the latest in what has become a booming economy around the mass deportation machine in the U.S. In California, Border Patrol officers conducted a raid in Los Angeles on Aug 6 by traveling to a local Home Depot parking lot in the back of a Penske truck. GEO Group, a private company that owns 100 prisons in the US, Australia, and South Africa, and including multiple ICE detention facilities across the United States. Independent reporter Sean Beckner-Carmitchel visited one such facility in Adelanto, CA last month, where he saw extreme overcrowding and perilous conditions for the detainees currently housed there.

“Our officers continue to focus on their longstanding mission of ensuring public safety on parkways and park lands,” a USPP spokesperson told The Handbasket when asked about the recent uptick in work vehicle stops in tandem with immigration authorities. “Like in years past, traffic safety enforcement remains a priority on the Baltimore Washington Parkway, including stopping commercial vehicles that are prohibited from using the parkway and addressing violations such as speeding or unsafe driving. 

The spokesperson added: “The parkway is managed by [National Park Service] as a historic and scenic federal roadway, designed for lighter traffic and passenger vehicles rather than heavy commercial transport.”

For many, the collaboration between local companies and the federal agencies involved in mass deportations is one step too far. 

“They were a profitable company before they were collaborating with ICE and Park Police,” Councilmember Mink said of Hannan Towing. “They don’t need this money.”