The D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force made more than 200 arrests this past week, the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) announced on Friday.
Deployed in the nation’s capital, the task force has made 18,344 arrests since August 2025 and seized 2,157 firearms, USMS said in an Oct. 9 statement. Recent charges include murder, possession of unregistered firearms, armed carjacking, and possession of controlled substances.
One person was accused of a stabbing homicide, while another was charged in an armed carjacking in which the victim was brutally beaten.
Another individual was apprehended following a search that uncovered three firearms and drugs such as cocaine and marijuana, officials said.
“Crime in D.C. will end! These arrests show why we must enforce all laws in our nation’s capital,” USMS Director Gadyaces S. Serralta said in the statement.
President Donald Trump established the task force through a March 2025 executive order aimed at restoring public order and fighting crime in Washington. Serralta is leading personnel from multiple agencies to carry out enforcement, including apprehending violent criminals, seizing firearms, and locating missing children.
On Aug. 11, 2025, Trump declared a crime emergency in Washington in another executive order. He said that rising violence in the nation’s capital endangered citizens, public servants, and tourists and disrupted the proper functioning of the federal government.
The city government’s inability to ensure safety negatively impacted the federal government’s “ability to operate efficiently to address the Nation’s broader interests without fear of our workers being subjected to rampant violence,” the order said, after which a federal law enforcement surge in Washington was launched.
In the order, Trump highlighted that Washington had higher murder, robbery, and violent crime rates than all 50 U.S. states. The homicide rate in Washington was 27.54 per 100,000 residents in 2024, the order said. The vehicle theft rate was 842.4 per 100,000 residents, the highest in the United States and more than triple the national average.
The Council of the District of Columbia criticized the law enforcement surge in the city, sending letters to 10 state governors, seeking withdrawal of their National Guard troops.
In a letter sent to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, the council said that more than 5,000 National Guard troops were in the city under the premise that their presence was required for public safety. However, since the August 2025 deployment, there has been “no measurable reduction” in violent crime, the letter said.
The council alleged that millions of dollars in taxpayer funds were being spent on the deployment without a demonstrable beneficial effect on violent crime.
In a letter to the council on Aug. 12 of this year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said that the council has no power to demand that governors remove National Guard troops from the capital, and that Washington was a “much safer place” than before.
“This Department of Justice will not stand for these politically motivated demands. We will continue standing with @POTUS and the Make D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force to deliver historic results for the community—and for visitors from across the country and around the world to enjoy,” the DOJ said in an Aug. 12 X post.
In an Aug. 11 report, the think tank Council on Criminal Justice said that homicide in Washington was down 41 percent in the first half of 2026 from the same period last year, before the task force was launched. Motor vehicle theft, sexual assault, larceny, carjacking, and robbery were also down year over year.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has credited National Guard members under the task force for the drop in crime in Washington.
The Pentagon had previously said that the National Guard deployments in Washington could remain in effect until Jan. 20, 2029, the end of Trump’s second term.
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