National Guard troops began to deploy in Washington on Tuesday evening as President Trump’s plan to use the federal government to crack down on crime in the city started taking shape.
About a dozen members of the National Guard appeared in five military vehicles near the Washington Monument as the sun set, a stark juxtaposition to a peaceful evening scene of people jogging by with headphones and walking their dogs. They declined to answer a reporter’s questions about their mission and about how long they would be there, with one saying he had been instructed not to.
Mr. Trump on Monday described the nation’s capital in apocalyptic terms as a crime-infested wasteland — a description that ignores the extent to which crime has been falling in the city over the last two years. But it remains unclear whether the eventual show of force will match the president’s rhetoric.
“This is only the beginning,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday. “Over the course of the next month, the Trump administration will relentlessly pursue and arrest every violent criminal in the District who breaks the law, undermines public safety and endangers law-abiding Americans.”
Ms. Leavitt boasted that a federal task force, which includes some local officers, made 23 arrests on Monday evening in connection with a range of crimes. In Washington, a city of roughly 700,000 people, the Metropolitan Police Department makes an average of 68 arrests a day, officials said. City officials said the National Guard troops would not have the authority to make arrests.
Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, and Pamela A. Smith, her police chief, met Tuesday morning with Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the city officials emerged from the meeting saying they were focused on how to make the most of the federal support. Ms. Bowser said she wanted to make sure the federal force was “being well used, and all in an effort to drive down crime.”
Ms. Bondi, in a post on X, called the meeting “productive,” and said the Justice Department would work closely with the city and its police department to “make Washington, D.C. safe again.” Ms. Bondi was joined at the meeting by Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general; Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director; Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington; and top officials from the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The meeting came one day after Mr. Trump invoked a law that allows the president to take control of the city’s police force for up to 30 days. Officials have said that 800 National Guard members and roughly 500 federal law enforcement agents were also being deployed to city streets to help curb crime. Some of those agents began conducting foot patrols over the weekend.
Mr. Patel said in a post on X Tuesday evening that the F.B.I. had participated in 10 arrests in “the first big push” of Mr. Trump’s crackdown.
Ms. Bowser on Tuesday declined to revisit Mr. Trump’s decision, a day after she called it “unsettling and unprecedented.” Even as she acknowledged on Monday that the law gave Mr. Trump the authority to take over the department temporarily, she disputed his contention that her administration had done little to address crime in Washington, where violent crime fell sharply in 2024.
Chief Smith said that the federalization of the local police would “make our city even better,” and that city officials would “look at the locations around our city where we believe there are areas of pockets of crime that we would like to address.”
Residents would see local police officers “working side by side with our federal partners in order to enforce the efforts that we need around the city,” she added.
As the officials work out the specifics of the takeover, it is still unclear how any disagreements would be resolved in the new command structure decreed by the president. Ms. Leavitt said that Mr. Trump sits at the top of the chain of command, and that Terry Cole, the D.E.A. administrator, would oversee the city’s police department.
Ms. Bowser said the president “has the authority, by virtue of the statute, to request services.” But she said city officials retained the authority to hire and fire people in the police department. She said the police chief would work “hand in hand with the people that the president has designated.”
Ms. Leavitt also said D.C. officials would use their authority to clean up homeless encampments, after Mr. Trump posted on social media last weekend that “The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY.” She said homeless people would be offered mental health and addiction services, and space in shelters. If they refuse, she said, they could be subject to fines or jail time.
Federal officials also demanded the city change its laws related to punishing juveniles for violent crime. Standing next to photos of young murder victims at a news conference Tuesday, Ms. Pirro decried local laws limiting sentences for teenagers who commit violent crime.
“I don’t need any more statistics. All I need are people to recognize that these were vibrant human beings cut down because of illegal guns,” she said. “I am here today to tell you that on behalf of all of these victims, all of these families, that they are going to be accountable, that we are going to make a difference.”
Across Washington, crime-prevention advocates braced for an increased police presence and warned of the consequences of Mr. Trump’s federal takeover.
“This is not about preventing crime,” said Clinique Chapman, the chief executive of DC Justice Lab. “It’s about political theater and federal control.”
She added: “What we do know and worry about is the unintended consequences, the collateral consequences, of this takeover. Young Black boys will bear the brunt of this, as they are the most likely to be stopped, to be questioned, to just really encounter the police interactions.”
Ms. Chapman warned that “we are going to see this damage done for years to come, beyond the time they are actually occupying the city right now.”
Mr. Trump’s federal crackdown on Washington could be both an optics play and a powder keg. When Mr. Trump last flooded the streets of Washington with federal agents, in 2020, he said it was meant to crack down on racial justice demonstrations. It did not immediately quell vandalism in the city.
It did, however, inflame tensions between protesters and law enforcement. Mr. Trump deployed an alphabet soup of federal agencies, and some agents violently cleared protesters from Lafayette Park before Mr. Trump posed with the Bible at a nearby church. Lines of federal agents would later stand guard outside Lafayette Park facing off for days with counterprotesters.
While the demonstrations were overwhelmingly peaceful, some in the crowds did vandalize property and break windows as protests went on after dark. But the federal agents did little to de-escalate tensions.
One night, as the protesters moved to downtown Washington, the administration dispatched military helicopters to conduct low-altitude maneuvers typically reserved for combat zones. The force of the helicopters tore tree branches and sent protesters scurrying around the corner, only to find rows of federal agents marching toward them armed with nonlethal weapons.
The Justice Department inspector general later criticized the deployment of the federal agents.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs contributed to this report.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
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