Last week, a gunman walked into a Manhattan building and killed four people. One was a New York City police officer — Didarul Islam, 36, an immigrant from Bangladesh, who left behind two sons and a pregnant wife.
It is a sad but important reminder that we are a country of immigrants, some of whom die in service to our country.
It is also a reminder of the long and strong connection between law enforcement and immigrants like Islam, who see a career in policing not only as a path to a more economically secure life but also as a path to a more purposeful one. According to a story in The New York Times, when Islam’s mother asked him why he left a safer job as a school security officer to join the NYPD, “He told her he wanted to leave behind a legacy for his family, something they could be proud of.”
Generations of immigrants have embraced that mission. As Chuck Wexler, head of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based think tank, wrote recently in a post to members, Islam’s death “got me thinking about how American police departments have relied on immigrants and descendants of immigrants for centuries, from Irish-American officers in Boston, to Polish-American officers in Chicago, to Korean-American and Mexican-American officers in Los Angeles, to Chinese-American officers in San Francisco, to Hmong-American officers in Saint Paul, to Somali-American officers in Minneapolis.”
That melting pot mentality has also been good for law enforcement. As Wexler also noted, “Officer Islam is part of a long history of immigrants improving American communities through policing.”
In policing, diversity is not a curse; it is a positive force.
For example, a 2017 report by Wexler’s organization showed that putting Somali American officers in a predominantly East African neighborhood in Minneapolis helped build trust and fight crime.
More recently, a 2024 report concluded that the benefits of hiring immigrants and refugees as officers included “counteracting the recruitment shortfall, filling important force needs to implement community policing initiatives, expanding the number of multilingual officers, and providing tangible evidence of a police department’s commitment to involving immigrant communities in the day-to-day activity of a police department.”
Wexler’s post cites other examples in police departments around the country where immigrants contribute greatly to the communities they serve. Some, like Islam, died in the line of duty.
When tragedy strikes, the police officer is a hero. Their country of origin is important only because it shows the starting point of an officer’s life and how much they were willing to risk in service to their new country — everything.
We live in a time of great suspicion and hostility toward immigrants in every walk of life. Police are on the frontlines, caught between the actions of masked federal agents who snatch people off the streets and the communities whose trust they need in order to do their job.
As Wexler also wrote to PERF members, while the Trump administration initially said immigration enforcement efforts would focus on violent criminals, “The latest ICE statistics show that as of June 29, there were 57,861 people detained by ICE, 41,495 — 71.7 percent — of whom had no criminal convictions.”
Police, he said, are totally supportive of a focus on violent offenders who are here illegally — however, trust with immigrant communities is threatened when you arrest those who have been working here for 20 years, at a wide range of jobs that make them an integral part of their cities and towns. With that comes concern people will be afraid to come forward to either report crime or serve as witnesses. Today’s domestic violence incident could be tomorrow’s homicide.
Wexler believes it is the job of Congress to come up with a solution. “Instead of comprehensive immigration reform, it has been left to ICE and police to do what Congress isn’t able to do,” he told me.
Police should not be feared by immigrants who have committed no crime other than coming to this country. Nor should it take the death of a police officer for people to value the promise of immigrants who come here seeking a better life. But it does.
As a New York Times headline put it, “A Funeral Shines a light on the Bangladeshis thriving in the N.Y.P.D.” Of the roughly 34,000 uniformed members of the New York City police force, nearly 1,000 belong to the Bangladeshi American Police Association. “Being police officers, it’s a way to help the New Yorkers, to help the community,” Sergeant Ershadur Siddique, president of that association, told the Times. “It’s to show that we are part of America, we are part of New York City, and being a police officer in New York City — it’s known in the world that we’re the best in the world — so it brings pride.”
We should never forget that we are a country of proud immigrants — some of whom, like Islam, die in service to that country.
Joan Vennochi is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at joan.vennochi@globe.com. Follow her @joan_vennochi.