Police make 630 arrests in Washington as Trump federal takeover ramps up

US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Thursday that 630 people have been arrested in Washington DC over a 10-day period, as the Trump administration considers ramping up its federal takeover of the US capital.

Just under half of those arrested were undocumented immigrants, the White House told local news station ABC7 on Wednesday.

Videos have circulated on social media for days now showing masked agents in bulletproof vests that only say “police” on the back hauling people out of their cars or ambushing them as they ride their bicycles or scooters. 

Many don’t speak English, and are tackled to the ground as they scream for help. The agents do not identify themselves or explain why someone has been stopped, searched or arrested. 

The takeover has caused a chilling effect across a highly diverse city, where some immigrant families have already told local news station NBC4 that they will not be sending their kids to school when the new term begins. The refusal stems from fear they may be separated from their children as the Department of Homeland Security pushes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents to meet certain quotas for arrests and deportations. 

Small business owners have also complained that their business is down as foot traffic slows, with many DC residents choosing to stay home, including US citizens who fear they will be racially profiled and harassed.

This comes as President Donald Trump revealed he would be out on patrol with the federal agents and members of the National Guard that he has ordered into the city. He said the operation, overall, was in a bid to bring down the crime rate.

“I’m going to be going out tonight, I think, with the police, and with the military, of course,” Trump told radio host Todd Starnes on Thursday.

So far, the National Guard has deployed 2,400 personnel to Washington, with another 700 members on their way from West Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio – all states led by Republican governors supportive of the president. 

The National Guard cannot make arrests, and critics have slammed the administration for using the soldiers in a performative role, costing taxpayers millions of dollars to move them into a small city where their mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles (M-ATV) can intimidate residents. 

Immigrants and homeless targeted

The federal takeover began on 11 August, when Trump invoked Section 740 of the Home Rule Act, which gives the president the authority to take over the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in Washington for 30 days. He insisted that the city’s violent crime rates were too high, and that the mayor and city council were not acting in the city’s best interests.

The mayor – who is almost entirely reliant on federal funding from a Republican-controlled Congress that is loyal to the president – tried to push back.

“We know that crime has gone down in our city, and it has gone down precipitously over the last two years because of a lot of hard work, changes to our public safety ecosystem, including changes to the law, and we know those facts don’t comport to what some people are saying,” Muriel Bowser said on Wednesday. 

But the Department of Justice has already launched its own investigation into what it believes are manipulated crime figures by the MPD. 

The District of Columbia (DC) is not a state. It was created to house the federal government, and is only about 68 square miles (176 sq km) in size. It has no voting representation in the House of Representatives and no senators. Congress decides how much money the city gets. 

Washington has long been a solid blue Democratic district, but its more than 700,000 mostly African-American residents vote on ballots that hardly make a dent in federal elections. Their longtime motto is “Taxation Without Representation”. 

Trump has said that only now are friends of his, both Republicans and Democrats, able to feel safe enough to go out to dinner in the city.

While residents acknowledge there are pockets of pervasive gun crime in the city, as well as widespread car break-ins, they say Washington is not any more particularly crime-ridden than similar cities across the country.

Different rankings show Washington DC as ranked between the 11th and 19th most violent city in 2024, and in January of this year US government statistics showed that violent crime was at a 30-year low during that same time period.

The president, however, has been aggrieved by images of homeless encampments in the parts of the city that he sees en route to his golf course in next door Virginia. He has ordered the people in those camps to be forcibly moved to temporary shelters, and bulldozers have been seen razing their personal belongings.

There is no evidence that links the vast majority of crime in DC to homelessness. 

On Wednesday, DC City Councillor Trayon White told ABC7 that when he went to the courthouse to examine what was happening to many of those arrested, “most of it was no paper”, meaning prosecutors declined to file charges in most cases.

“A lot of frivolous charges, not really arrests targeting people committing crimes,” White added, expressing “concern about the type of policing” occurring right now.