Washington, DC, is home to the largest Ethiopian community outside of Ethiopia, and the immigrants in that community live with constant anxiety.

On the sidewalks across the Washington, D.C., region, the sight of uniformed patrols and federal agents is enough to make some Ethiopian immigrants reach for documents they don’t carry — not because they’ve committed a crime, but because they don’t know what questions might come next or whether anything in their pockets will be enough to prove they belong.

This story centers voices that are often missed in U.S. immigration coverage.

While national debates often fixate on Latino communities, Black immigrants, including Ethiopians across DC, Maryland, and Virginia, describe a quieter crisis: living under constant anxiety, watching patrols, hearing of sudden detentions, and wondering if families will even know where they’ve been taken. What follows is a look at the policies and perceptions that fuel that fear and the resilience communities use to survive it.

The Washington, D.C., metropolitan area is home to the largest Ethiopian community outside of Ethiopia, according to local archives and migration data. Estimates vary widely, but researchers believe that while about 35,000 residents were born in Ethiopia, the broader community of Ethiopian ancestry could exceed 200,000 people across D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and
Terms of Service apply.

“When you walk on the street, even if you are legal, there are some questions you don’t like asked,” said A.G., an Ethiopian immigrant living in Fairfax, Virginia. He asked that his full name not be used because he fears retaliation or being targeted by immigration authorities.  “Who walks with their passport every day? This is the fear for most people- you don’t know if you’ll be let go, or taken somewhere else until you can prove your citizenship.”

Across the District and its suburbs, Ethiopians describe checking over their shoulders, avoiding late-night commutes, and coaching young people on what to do if a parent doesn’t come home.

Policy contradictions deepen the dread. Recent DHS overstay data offers some context. In fiscal year 2023, hundreds of thousands of nonimmigrant visa overstays were recorded, and certain African nations with high overstay rates are now being singled out by U.S. policy for extra scrutiny.

But public reports do not clearly specify overstay rates for Ethiopian nationals, and analysts warn that overstay statistics are imperfect due to gaps in exit tracking and visa category complexity.  What this reveals is less about precise numbers and more about narrative power: governments increasingly invoke “overstay risk” as a justification for profiling, and that context deepens the stakes for communities like the one A.G. is describing.