Trump boasts about deployment of troops and federal police in Washington: ‘We’re going to stay here for a while’
The president visited the headquarters of the deployment, which has been widely criticized by residents and which he declares necessary to combat violence
Donald Trump has taken to boasting about his decision to deploy federal soldiers and agents on the streets of Washington, despite the unease the measure has generated among residents. The Republican, who adopted the measure 10 days ago citing an alleged escalation of violence, went to the headquarters of the deployment to greet soldiers and police officers. “We’re going to make it safe, and we’re going to then go on to other places, but we’re going to stay here for a while,” the president said. The legislation allows the president to maintain this measure for 30 days, but Trump says he is considering extending it.
The president ordered the deployment as part of his takeover of a city with an overwhelmingly Democratic majority, which he described — contrary to statistics — as a place of “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor.”
Trump had declared hours earlier that he would go on patrol “with the police and the military” that evening, in comments on conservative commentator Todd Starnes’ radio show.
The president’s afternoon outing amounted to a triumphant stroll, one of the many the Republican administration has taken since ordering the deployment of the National Guard and federal agents to the U.S. capital in response to what it considers a rise in crime that had become a national emergency. Initially, the White House indicated that some 800 troops would reinforce local police forces. Since then, six Republican-majority states have sent troops to the mission, which has expanded its original remit to increasingly focus on the detention of illegal immigrants.
Trump’s order, partially limited days later in court, is possible because of the unique status of the capital, which lacks the privileges of a state. A 1970s law, the DC Home Rule Act, grants the city autonomy and includes a clause allowing the local police force to be placed directly under presidential control when “special emergency conditions” exist. Trump has invoked this clause, arguing that the levels of violence in the city meet those “special conditions.”
Trump visited the Park Police headquarters in Anacostia, southeast Washington, now the operations center for the deployment. He was accompanied, among others, by his Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem; Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum; and his top domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller.
A day earlier, Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Miller had gone to the capital’s Union Station to greet the troops deployed there, offering them hamburgers and calling for “getting DC out of its lawless state,” amid jeers and whistles from onlookers.
Trump maintains that since issuing the order on August 7, Washington has become “perhaps the safest city in the country, and it’s getting better by the minute.” He says that until now, the capital — a tourist magnet thanks to its free monuments and museums — was a wasteland that many avoided, but now “people are flocking back.”
The White House issues daily bulletins listing the arrests made since the order went into effect. So far, it has counted 630, for offenses ranging from homicide to drink-driving, although it does not specify whether these arrests include only those carried out by federal agents or also by the local Metropolitan Police. It does indicate that a third of those detained, about 250, are illegal immigrants. Although the deployment is especially visible in the city’s tourist center and around its most well-known landmarks, where violent crime is minimal or nonexistent, the highest number of arrests, according to the White House, have occurred in the Seventh and Eighth Wards, part of the Anacostia neighborhood, among the city’s poorest areas and predominantly African American.
In the reality outside the walls of the White House, statistics indicate that, although the level of violence in the capital has historically been high, there has been a notable decrease. Violent crime dropped by 35% in 2024 compared to the previous year and reached the lowest levels in the last 30 years, according to a Department of Justice report published in January. And the population of this overwhelmingly Democratic city, where only 6% of voters backed Trump last November, is opposed to the presidential measures to seize control.
A poll published by The Washington Post found that 79% of residents oppose the presidential order, while only 17% support it. Only 31% consider the crime rate to be serious or very serious, while 21% consider the streets in their neighborhoods to be unsafe. In contrast, 78% say they feel reasonably or very secure in their areas of residence. Two-thirds of the population say the police and military presence makes them feel less safe.
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