Trump’s DC takeover produces moderate drop in crime — and huge spike in immigration arrests

Washington
 — 

In the first week after the White House effectively seized control of Washington, DC’s police force and deployed federal agents and troops to the district, the city saw a moderate drop in reported crime — and a far larger surge in arrests of immigrants, a CNN analysis of government data found.

In the week beginning August 12, the first full day the Trump administration had control of the Metropolitan Police Department, property crimes dropped roughly 19% compared to the week before, and violent crime dipped by about 17%, according to the most recent public data published by the MPD.

Those trends vary widely by types of crimes, however. While robberies and car break-ins were down by more than 40%, other thefts were flat week-to-week and there was a 6% increase in burglary cases and a 14% increase in cases of assault with a dangerous weapon, the data shows. There have been two murders since President Donald Trump signed his executive order taking control of the department, which is consistent with recent weeks in DC, though none since August 13.

The drop in overall crime comes as federal agencies have embedded themselves with local officers, assisting in arrests, searches, warrant executions and other local police work as they drive around the district in vehicles only marked by their occasional flashing blue and red lights.

At the same time, the wave of ICE agents deployed to the district have fueled a much more dramatic increase in arrests of immigrants.

Since August 7, federal officials have arrested 300 people in DC who don’t have legal immigration status, the administration said — a more than tenfold increase over the typical ICE arrest numbers for the district, CNN’s review found.

Over the first six months of Trump’s term, the agency arrested about 12 immigrants in DC per week on average, according to data published by the Deportation Data Project, a research group associated with the University of California, Berkeley law school.

ICE agents trail MPD officers, ready to respond if anyone pulled over or questioned has overstayed their visa or otherwise is in the country unlawfully, one law enforcement official told CNN.

In response to CNN’s findings, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the media was trying to dismiss the “exceptional results” of Trump’s efforts in DC.

“The drops in crime are not ‘moderate,’ they are life-changing for the countless of DC residents and visitors who have not been murdered, robbed, carjacked, or victims of overall violent crime in the last week,” Jackson said. “The priority of this operation remains getting violent criminals off the streets — regardless of immigration status.”

But the noticeable spike in immigration numbers also echoes concerns by some DC leaders, including Mayor Muriel Bowser, that the true purpose of Trump’s local takeover is to pursue undocumented immigrants.

When asked Thursday whether Trump’s crime emergency was a pretext to enforce the administration’s immigration efforts, Bowser told reporters that a recent order from Attorney General Pam Bondi “almost exclusively focused on immigration enforcement and homeless encampment enforcement.”

“So I’ll let you draw your own conclusion,” Bowser said.

DC’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit challenging Bondi’s order to ignore sanctuary laws on the books in DC, which previously limited the police force’s ability to cooperate with ICE on immigration cases. During a hearing last week, however, the federal judge presiding over the case indicated that Trump’s authority under the Home Rule Act likely allows him to order police to assist ICE.

Viral videos have circulated in DC this week of ICE agents — donning their now-signature masks — tackling immigrants, including some food delivery workers, and in one instance breaking car windows to arrest two men.

During one evening of the heightened police presence this week, CNN tracked officers responding to reports of shootings, drug and firearm possessions and one stolen vehicle. Federal agents communicated over local police channels as they stopped and searched vehicles and responded to reports of crime, warning each other about DC’s speed cameras.

MPD and federal partners have also established traffic checkpoints in the past week — a law enforcement tool that’s not common in the district — including a large checkpoint with dozens of officers and agents on a highway leading out of the city.

Officers were seen pulling over certain vehicles and conducting searches, though it was unclear how law enforcement were determining who to pull over and who to allow through.

As night fell, police chatter picked up, with local and federal officers weaving through the streets together in long lines of flashing lights and speeding unmarked cars.

But some incidents, like a shooting in one of the higher crime areas in the Southeast area of the city, were handled solely by MPD officers.

“They only come when bad sh*t happens,” one resident standing outside of the police tape following the shooting told CNN.

On Wednesday night, there appeared to be relatively few federal agents patrolling the streets of DC on foot, something that was commonly seen in the first few days of Trump’s federal response. Instead, agents remained in their nondescript vehicles, waiting for calls to blip in through the radio.

“It just feels like overkill,” another DC resident told CNN during a night out on the popular U-Street corridor in the city, lined with restaurants, clubs and vape shops.

Roughly eight in 10 DC residents oppose Trump’s police takeover and his deployment of the National Guard and FBI to the city, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll. Vice President JD Vance and other administration figures have dismissed that survey finding, claiming without citing evidence that the federal surge is popular with local residents.

The full picture of crime in DC under Trump’s control is likely to keep evolving. The numbers analyzed by CNN are based on the preliminary data available Friday morning and could change over time, as some crimes take longer to be entered into the department’s database. And the data does not cover all crimes in the city; only some types of offenses are reported daily by the department.

The statistics have also become a political pressure point in Trump’s takeover. On Friday, the president on social media threatened “a complete and total Federal takeover of the City,” accusing Bowser of promoting “false and highly inaccurate crime figures.”

While local officials have pointed to a decline in DC crime in 2024 and 2025 after a spike in 2023, the Trump Justice Department is now investigating whether MPD manipulated crime data.

The investigation comes following reports that an MPD commander was placed on administrative leave amid accusations that the department was falsifying crime data in one district, marking offenses as lower-level crimes than they might actually be. The MPD’s own probe into the issue is ongoing.

But Trump has also overstated the impact of the federal takeover, proclaiming on Friday that it had caused a public safety “miracle” unseen in recent memory — the nation’s capital going a week without a single reported homicide.

“DC was a hellhole, and now it’s safe,” Trump told reporters Friday. “I hate to say this, because it doesn’t sound very good, but there have been no murders in DC in the last week. That’s the first time in anybody’s memory that you haven’t had a murder in a week.”

It’s correct that there have been no murders in DC over the last week, according to the public MPD data. Two murders have taken place since Trump signed his executive order wresting control of the police department – one on the evening of August 11, the same day the order was signed, and another on August 13.

This is not the first recent week without homicides, as Trump claimed. There were no murders reported from May 4 through May 11, April 11 to 17, and a more than two-week-long period from February 25 through March 12.

There have been a total of 89 homicides committed so far in 2025, according to the district’s data. In some cases, murders are confirmed and added into the public MPD database weeks or months after they occur, so it’s possible that additional cases will be added.

Protests against the crackdown have been sporadic, with residents in some neighborhoods taking to the streets after ICE or other federal agents are spotted, sometimes forming crowds around the officers and chanting for them to leave.

In court, Justice Department attorneys said Trump’s authority over the MPD will expire at the end of the 30-day period set out in the Home Rule Act — which the president has cited for his authority.

But neither the DOJ nor the White House have said whether Trump will continue to use federal agents and the hundreds of National Guard members he has deployed after his month of control over the police department expires. The president himself has said he could keep them there “as long as I want.”