FBI moves to dispatch 120 agents to D.C. streets as Trump vows crackdown on crime

The FBI has begun dispatching about 120 of its agents in overnight shifts to help local law enforcement prevent carjackings and violent crime in Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter, as President Donald Trump threatens a federal takeover of the nation’s capital.

Trump, who plans a news conference at the White House on Monday on this topic, compared the forthcoming action against D.C. crime to his administration’s aggressive crackdown against illegal immigration at the southern border, saying on Sunday that he plans to “immediately clear out the city’s homeless population and take swift action against crime.”

“Be prepared! There will be no “MR. NICE GUY.” We want our Capital BACK,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social social media platform.

The deployment of FBI agents to deal with local crime puts agents from the bureau’s counterintelligence, public corruption and other divisions with minimal training in traffic stops out on the streets in potentially dangerous encounters, diverting them from their typical jobs at the bureau. And it comes as Trump is publicly portraying the city as rampant with violent crime - even as the mayor refutes that characterization, pointing to police data showing a drop in violent crime.

Last week, Trump ordered federal law enforcement agents from several agencies to be deployed on city streets and called for more juveniles to be charged in the adult justice system.

Staffing assignments this weekend reveal for the first time how many new FBI resources the Trump administration could divert to local crime and the frustration it has caused within the bureau.

In recent days, the administration has authorized up to 120 agents, largely 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 people familiar with those efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss specifics of a staffing plan that has not been made public. FBI agents generally do not have authority to make traffic stops, and the people said the agents’ roles could include supporting the other agencies during traffic stops.

Federal land is scattered across Washington, and local enforcement often works alongside federal law enforcement to patrol these and surrounding areas. But the U.S. Park Police and Secret Service - which have more experience patrolling streets - typically do this work, not the FBI.

The Secret Service and the U.S. Secret Service Uniformed Division have also been directed to launch special patrols in D.C., according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the operation.

The Trump administration has not asked the D.C. police department - the chief law enforcement agency responsible for policing local crime - on how best to deploy these federal resources, according to a senior official with the department, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the matter.

Because D.C. is not a state, the federal government has unique authority to exert control over the city - even amid objections from the residents and locally elected government. The Home Rule Act of 1973 gave D.C. residents the ability to elect their own mayor and council members. A federal takeover of the D.C. police force would be an extraordinary assertion of power in a place where local leaders have few avenues to resist federal encroachment.

“Agents from the FBI Washington Field Office continue to participate in the increased federal law enforcement presence in D.C., which includes assisting our law enforcement partners,” the FBI said in a statement Sunday morning.

“I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Sunday morning. “It’s all going to happen very fast, just like the Border.”

In a different social media post on Sunday, Trump said the 10 a.m. White House news conference on Monday will be about the city’s cleanliness, its physical renovation and its general condition.

“The Mayor of D.C., 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,” Trump said in that afternoon Truth Social post.

Bowser (D) has been pushing back against Trump’s characterization of the city she leads, pointing out on MSNBC on Sunday morning that crime rates have been dropping in the nation’s capital.

In D.C., violent crime is down 26 percent compared with this time in 2024, according to D.C. police data. Homicides are down 12 percent.

“If the priority is to show force in an American city, we know he can do that here,” Bowser, who said she last spoke to Trump a few weeks ago, said on MSNBC. “But it won’t be because there’s a spike in crime.”

The reassignment of FBI agents has further demoralized some agents in the Washington Field Office, who believe they have little expertise or training in thwarting carjackers and were already angered by a spate of firings inside the agency that they deemed were unwarranted. Last week, the Trump administration ousted with no explanation FBI personnel across the country, including the head of the Washington Field Office.

In 2020, the first Trump administration dispatched FBI agents, mostly from the Washington Field Office, to respond to the racial justice protests that June in the nation’s capital. The Trump administration had wanted a federal presence in the streets as a deterrent to rioters or protesters who might try to vandalize federal property.

Several agents were captured in a photograph taking a knee in what was viewed as a gesture of solidarity to protesters marching against racial injustice - an image that went viral and fueled accusations from conservatives that the bureau harbors a liberal agenda. But people familiar with the FBI have said agents are not trained for riot control and were placed in an untenable position as they knelt down, trying to defuse a tense situation.

In the first months of the current Trump administration, officials reassigned several of those agents who were captured in that photo from nearly five years ago.

This spring, Trump ordered the creation of the “D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force,” a vehicle for his long-held fixations on quality-of-life issues in the city, including homeless encampments and graffiti.

On Sunday, homeless advocates and D.C. residents criticized Trump’s threats to remove homeless people from D.C. as inhumane, costly and impractical.

“That money could be better spent getting folks housing and support” Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director at the National Homelessness Law Center, said of the federal law enforcement presence in the District.

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.”