As Trump promises a crackdown on crime, the FBI moves to send 120 agents to the streets of D.C.

To combat carjackings and other crimes, the Trump administration has temporarily deployed FBI agents to work overnight shifts.

To assist in combating carjacking and violent crimes in Washington, the FBI has started sending around 120 agents on overnight shifts. This comes in light of the local violence as President Donald Trump considers a federal takeover of the capital.  

In anticipation of the news conference scheduled for the White House on Monday, Trump has accused the FBI of Washington D.C.’s crime escalation. “[c]ompare the forthcoming action against D.C. crime to the southern border immigration crackdown,” Trump stated.  

In his social media post, Trump added, "Be prepared! There will be no “MR. NICE GUY.” We want our Capital BACK.”

Distributing FBI agents to address local crime issues conflicts with the bureau’s counterintelligence, public corruption, and other divisions, forcing them to conduct minimal training in traffic stops. This allows them to stray from their usual responsibilities at the bureau. This is happening as Trump is depicting the city as having uncontrolled violent crime—something the mayor disputes, citing a decrease in violent crime from the police data.

Trump called for more juveniles to be charged in the adult court system last week and directed federal law enforcement officers from multiple agencies to be stationed on city streets. For the first time, this weekend's staffing assignments show how many additional FBI resources the Trump administration could devote to local crime and the resulting annoyance among the bureau.

The people familiar with those efforts, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the details of a staffing plan that has not been made public, said the administration has recently approved up to 120 agents, mostly from the FBI's Washington Field Office, to work overnight shifts for at least one week alongside D.C. police and other federal law enforcement officers in the nation's capital. According to the sources, FBI agents may assist other law enforcement during traffic stops, but they typically do not have the authority to conduct traffic stops.

According to several people familiar with the plans, the FBI is also sending agents from outside D.C., such as Philadelphia, to assist with the increase in federal law enforcement in the District. There are several federal properties in Washington, and local law enforcement frequently patrols these and the surrounding areas in conjunction with federal law enforcement. However, this work is usually done by the Secret Service and the U.S. Park Police, who have more street patrol experience. According to a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the operation, the Secret Service and the U.S. Secret Service Uniformed Division have also been instructed to begin special patrols in D.C.

According to a senior official with the D.C. police department, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the issue, the Trump administration has not asked the department, which is the primary law enforcement agency in charge of policing local crime, how best to use these federal resources. The federal government has special power to impose control over D.C. because it is not a state, despite protests from the local elected government and citizens. Residents of D.C. are now able to choose their own mayor and council members thanks to the Home Rule Act of 1973. In a place where local leaders have few options, a federal takeover of the D.C. police force would be an unprecedented display of power.

The FBI said in a statement Sunday morning that agents from the FBI Washington Field Office are still helping our law enforcement partners as part of the heightened federal law enforcement presence in D.C.

In recent days, Trump has been criticising the nation's capital more and more. The president shared a picture of a former employee of the U.S. DOGE Service who was hurt in an attempted carjacking on social media last week. A 15-year-old boy and girl from Maryland were taken into custody by D.C. police shortly after the attack and accused of unarmed carjacking. In a Sunday morning Truth Social post, Trump declared, "I'm going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before." "Like the Border, it will all happen very quickly."

Trump stated in a separate social media post on Sunday that the topic of the White House news conference on Monday at 10 a.m. would be the cleanliness, physical improvements, and overall state of the city.

In that afternoon Truth Social post, Trump stated, "D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is a good person who has tried, but she has been given many chances, and the Crime Numbers get worse, and the City only gets dirtier and less attractive." In response to Trump's portrayal of the city she leads, Bowser (D) noted on Sunday morning on MSNBC that crime rates in the nation's capital have been declining. According to D.C. police data, violent crime in the city is down 26% from this time in 2024. The number of homicides has decreased by 12%.

About 900 juvenile arrests have been made by D.C. police so far this year, which is nearly 20% less than during the same period last year. At least four dozen of those charges are for carjacking, and about 200 are for violent crimes.

Bowser, who claimed to have last spoken to Trump a few weeks ago, stated on MSNBC that "we know he can do that here if the priority is to show force in an American city." "But it won't be because crime is on the rise." Some agents in the Washington Field Office, who feel they lack the knowledge or training to stop carjackers and were already incensed by a wave of internal firings that they felt were unjustified, have become even more disheartened as a result of the FBI agents' reassignment. The head of the Washington Field Office was among the FBI employees nationwide who were fired by the Trump administration last week without providing an explanation.

When racial justice protests broke out in the nation's capital in June 2020, the first Trump administration sent FBI agents, primarily from the Washington Field Office, to respond. In order to discourage rioters or protesters who might attempt to damage federal property, the Trump administration had favoured having federal personnel in the streets.

A picture of several agents kneeling in support of demonstrators marching against racial injustice went viral and stoked conservative charges that the bureau has a liberal agenda. However, those with knowledge of the FBI have stated that agents are not prepared to handle riots and were put in an unworkable situation when they knelt down to diffuse a heated situation. Several of those agents in that photo from almost five years ago were reassigned by officials in the first months of the current Trump administration.

Trump posted a bloody photo of the injured former DOGE employee on social media last week, saying, "If D.C. doesn't get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they're not going to get away with it anymore."

The "D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force," which Trump established this spring, is a vehicle for his long-standing obsessions with the city's quality of life problems, such as graffiti and homeless encampments. Trump's threats to expel homeless people from D.C. were denounced by homeless advocates and locals on Sunday as cruel, expensive, and unrealistic. Regarding federal law enforcement's presence in the District, Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director at the National Homelessness Law Centre, stated, "That money could be better spent getting folks housing and support."

Deborah Goosby, a 67-year-old homeless woman, sat in her usual spot greeting shoppers outside a D.C. grocery store on Sunday morning.

“That’s never going to happen,” she said after hearing that Trump wanted to send people experiencing homelessness far from the nation’s capital. “They can’t make me leave.”