'Draw your own conclusion': DC mayor uses Bondi admission to blow hole in crime claim

Branded as an effort to crackdown on overall crime, President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of Washington, D.C. was likely designed from the start with an ulterior motive, Mayor Muriel Bowser suggested Saturday.

A CNN review of crime data in the nation’s capital found that, since Aug. 7, just two days after the Trump administration took control of Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, federal officials had arrested 300 migrants suspected of being in the country illegally, an explosive increase over past data on migrant arrests in the city, with there being an average of 12 such arrests, weekly, since Trump took office in January.

Speaking with CNN, Bowser said that the migrant arrest data, coupled with a recent order from Attorney General Pam Bondi, suggested the takeover very well could have been a pretext to expand the administration’s immigration crackdown.

“(Bondi’s order) almost exclusively focused on immigration enforcement and homeless encampment enforcement,” Bowser told CNN. “So I’ll let you draw your own conclusion.”

As of Saturday, there are thousands of federal agents and National Guard members patrolling the streets of the nation’s capital, with 2,000 National Guard troops recently authorized by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to carry firearms.

Considering the significant cost of deploying thousands of federal agents and National Guard troops, a number of critics have mocked the takeover as performative, especially given its relatively low arrest numbers, a significant share of them migrants.

Trump’s authority to maintain the federal takeover is limited to 30 days. An extension would require approval in Congress, which remains unlikely given the GOP’s slim majority. A White House insider, however, has suggested Trump may seek to make the takeover “permanent,” regardless of his authority to do so.