Juan Carlos Dela Torre had already experienced one run-in with one of the roving crews of federal law enforcement agents who descended on Washington, D.C., this month. Then on Friday night came another.

He was standing on the sidewalk smoking a joint, which the officers grabbed as evidence of “consuming marijuana in a public space,” a misdemeanor in the district. The officers took him to a local police station, searched him and, they said, found a small amount of the stimulant MDMA. He was sent to jail.

“I’ve never seen this much police presence in my whole life,” said Mr. Dela Torre, 37, a massage therapist who has lived in Washington since 1994. “You guys are worried about some guy smoking a joint on the corner on a Friday night?”

President Trump declared that crime in Washington was “out of control” earlier this month and said he would use the power of the federal government to “rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor — and worse.”

But a review by The New York Times of about a thousand arrests that were made during the first two weeks of the federal law enforcement surge suggests that the operation has been more of a sprawling dragnet than a targeted crime-fighting operation.