Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser questioned claims Monday that the influx of federal officers has made the city safer, after the attorney general touted arrest numbers from over the weekend.
“[D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department] takes guns off the street every day and every week, and any time you have a surge of officers, I would expect that you have some results,” Bowser said. “I say repeatedly, we need 500 more officers. In D.C. with 500 more officers, get 500 more officers worth of results. What is not necessary, however, is this kind of commandeering or the attempted commandeering of the force itself, and the expanded, I think, work that is not related to violence.”
When asked, Bowser emphasized that National Guard troops “can’t do law enforcement, as far as I know,” adding, “Unless their orders have somehow changed, I don’t know that they can engage in arrest.”
MORE: Hundreds more National Guard troops expected to arrive in DC
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who spent some time over the weekend at U.S. Park Police headquarters serving meals to federal agents deployed in D.C., said the operation has so far netted 400 arrests.
“Washington, DC is getting safer every night thanks to our law enforcement partners,” she posted on X. “Just this weekend, 137 arrests were made and 21 illegal firearms were seized. In total, there have been nearly 400 arrests — and we are not slowing down!”
The DC Police Union has touted a decrease in crime since the federal government surged law enforcement into the District, saying robbery is down 46%, violent crime is down 22%, and all crimes are down 8%.
Crime in the nation’s capital was already decreasing from last year, according to statistics released from the MPD, but it did not respond when asked whether the federal agencies’ presence has had any impact.
D.C.’s budget faced a $1 billion shortfall when, in an effort to avert a government shutdown earlier this year, lawmakers pushed through language in a massive government funding package that would hold the District to 2024 spending levels.
Shortly after the bill passed, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he would lead the House in passing standalone legislation to fix the D.C. budget. The Senate unanimously passed legislation to fix the glitch in mid-March, but the House never took up the Senate bill and has so far not taken floor action on the matter.
Over the weekend, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), U.S. Park Police and members of the National Guard were all seen around Washington, D.C.
FBI agents who are patrolling city streets — not only in Washington, but in other cities around the country — will soon be equipped with tasers, according to a source familiar with the operations, in an effort to give a nonlethal option to agents on the street.
More states are sending National Guard members to D.C.
Troops from the West Virginia Guard have begun to arrive and 877 Guard members have mobilized so far. That number is expected to grow to more than 1,500 in coming days as more troops arrive from West Virginia, Ohio, and South Carolina.
The MPD is also now offering limited assistance with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Over the weekend, a video of what appeared to be ICE agents arresting a delivery driver went viral on social media. The agents, who are wearing masks in the video, do not identify themselves. The video also shows a federal agent hitting his head on the ground during the takedown.
The Department of Homeland Security said the man in the video was in the country illegally and had a final order of removal, meaning he could be deported from the U.S.
“Cristian Enrique Carias Torres is an illegal alien from Venezuela who illegally entered the U.S. under the Biden administration in 2023,” a post from DHS on social media says. “He has a final order of removal from an immigration judge, issued that same year. Carias Torres has racked up a long list of traffic crimes, for which he currently has active warrants.”
Bowser said she would talk to D.C. Police Chief Pam Smith about agents wearing masks.
“I did ask the Chief to have further conversations about these masks,” she said. “There is no reason for a law enforcement official to be masked.”
The Department has said agents wear masks due to the threats against federal agents.
Advocates, including the ACLU of D.C., decried the presence of the National Guard and federal agents in the city.
“The deployment of out-of-state National Guard troops and more federal agents onto D.C. streets is a brazen abuse of power meant to intimidate and create fear in the nation’s capital. This is an unnecessary overstep to micromanage D.C. under a phony emergency, causing real harm to residents and visitors — all to advance the Trump administration’s political agenda,” said Monica Hopkins, executive director of ACLU of D.C.
“The ACLU-D.C. will continue to monitor the use of D.C. police and federal law enforcement to ensure that the constitutional rights of our community are protected,” she said.
ABC News’ Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.
