White House efforts to tighten its grip on the Washington, D.C., police force are prompting pushback from the city’s leaders, escalating tensions as the Trump administration sought to compel Washington’s help with immigration enforcement.

The Trump administration on Friday reversed course and agreed to leave the Washington, D.C., police chief in control of the department, while Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a new memo, directed the District's police to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement regardless of any city law.

Washington D.C. Chief of Police Pamela Smith on Thursday issued an executive order allowing Metropolitan Police Department officers making traffic stops to notify federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents about undocumented immigrants they encounter,