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Aug 15, 2025  |  
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Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs


NextImg:Feds Turn Into Beat Cops in Trump’s D.C. Policing Surge

When a police dispatcher relayed that a man had walked into Howard University Hospital in Washington with a gunshot wound one night this week, it was not just the local police who showed up to investigate. A group of U.S. Border Patrol and other federal agents descended on the brown-brick hospital two miles from the White House, parking their S.U.V.s in front of the main entrance.

A few blocks away, a team of F.B.I. agents was helping to conduct a traffic stop on a Mercedes on the side of a busy street; a few hours later, agents who ordinarily investigate federal weapons violations stood watch as local police officers tried to subdue a disturbed man at a bus stop.

President Trump’s announcement on Monday that the federal government was assuming law enforcement responsibility in the nation’s capital has begun to quietly transform the day-to-day business of policing. Routine calls that might have been handled solely by the Metropolitan Police Department now attract an alphabet soup of federal agencies, including agents from Homeland Security Investigations, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as the F.B.I.

In a city where federal law enforcement officials regularly go to work in offices, they are suddenly out on the street, visible almost everywhere — except for those hidden behind the tinted glass of unmarked cars.

Each evening this week, federal agents have rolled out of a vast federal Park Police station south of the Anacostia River to ride through the District until the early morning hours.

Agents have appeared at a range of locations, strolling by bars and restaurants in the trendy U Street Corridor, patrolling a near-empty National Mall after dark and winding through apartment complexes.

Robyn Swirling, who lives in Northwest D.C., said that she returned to her home in Manor Park one night this week and soon saw dozens of federal agents on the other side of the quiet residential street. They told her when she asked that they had a warrant, and she watched as they took a man from her neighbor’s home into a police car.

Early in the week, a group of F.B.I. agents stood in the bleachers of a high school athletic field in the Petworth neighborhood, looking on as adult recreation league soccer games were played. It did not appear that any crimes were taking place, and afterward, the soccer league emailed its members a link to an American Civil Liberties Union website about the public’s rights when stopped by the F.B.I.

“Everyone was just uneasy about it,” said Elena Lensink, who was among those playing that evening. “All that was happening at the field was, like, three soccer games.”

The week’s work has included a range of law enforcement activities that ordinarily would have been handled by local police officers, who have continued to do their work, but now federal agents were often collaborating or looking on. Federal agents have hunted for guns and stolen vehicles, conducted drug busts and chased down members of the public who ran when approached. Some agents could be seen pulling over cars for minor infractions, or reminding people at a sobriety checkpoint to wear their seatbelts.

A typical action played out early on Friday morning, when a D.C. police officer pulled over a Toyota in the Carver Langston neighborhood in the city’s Northeast quadrant. The traffic stop was initiated in front of a discount clothing store, where a brigade of federal agents was sitting in the parking lot in about a dozen unmarked cars.

As soon as the car was pulled over, the federal officers — from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and several other agencies — gathered around it, blocking off two lanes of traffic and a streetcar track for about 10 minutes before telling the driver that he was free to leave.

In another part of town, earlier in the week, F.B.I. officers descended when other officers conducting a traffic stop in the Brentwood neighborhood reported that the man driving had an open warrant and a gun. Residents who were outside enjoying the summer night eyed the scene warily as the man was arrested and the agents returned to their cars.

The deployment of federal law enforcement has galvanized the city’s liberal activists, some of whom gathered around a sobriety checkpoint operated in part by federal officers and jeered until the officers left.

Late Thursday night, F.B.I. agents retreated from an effort to take down a handful of tents housing homeless people at Washington Circle when a woman who lived in one, accompanied by members of a homeless advocacy group, showed them a notice the city had given her allowing her to stay a few more days.

Federal officials have said they have made more than 150 arrests and seized 27 guns since the operation began, but have offered few details about the specific police work being done or the charges being brought.

The White House and the office of Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for D.C., did not provide the names of those arrested but did highlight charges filed against a man who was accused of throwing a sandwich at a Border Patrol officer after condemning the presence of federal agents on the streets.

Yet simply being present appears to be one of the goals.

A video taken in the Bellevue neighborhood this week showed a phalanx of federal agents, including the A.T.F. and Homeland Security, walking between brick apartment buildings and stopping to speak with a few people on a stoop.

“You got your I.D. on you, champ?” a U.S. Park Police officer asked the man taking the video, initially thinking he was holding a joint before realizing it was a cigarette. The man who recorded the encounter said later that he had been disturbed to see so many federal officers arrive at his house, but said he did not want to discuss it further to avoid drawing more attention.

Mr. Trump’s approach has been applauded by some residents who view Washington as increasingly unsafe (the city recorded its highest murder rate in 20 years in 2023 but has since seen a significant reduction). But some also said they worried that Mr. Trump, who has frequently spoken of “unleashing” the police, has given law enforcement a green light to return to harsh tactics that in the past have disrupted poorer neighborhoods and led to injustices, particularly for Black and Hispanic residents.

Nathan Salminen, a cybersecurity lawyer, said he was alarmed when he drove through the city on a recent night and saw traffic stop after traffic stop in poorer areas, reminding him of what policing was like in the 1990s.

“Since then, a string of good police chiefs and a lot of community outreach has made the relationship between the M.P.D. and the community dramatically better,” he said, referring to the city police. “But the last few nights, I’ve seen a return to the sorts of tactics that I’ve seen in the 1990s in those same neighborhoods.”

As Kyvin Battle waited for a bus in Anacostia earlier this week, he said he feared that Black men like him would be unfairly targeted.

“A lot of us who are innocent are going to get caught in the middle of all this,” said Mr. Battle, 57, a military veteran.

As he spoke, a group of federal officers — several in unmarked cars — made a U-turn and rushed down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

“I’ve been here six years,” he said. “I’ve never seen that.”

Darren Sands contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.