United States President Donald Trump has pledged to evict homeless people from the nation’s capital, after days of musing about taking federal control of Washington, DC, where he has falsely suggested crime is on the rise.
“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.
“The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong. It’s all going to happen very fast.”
The announcement comes after Trump earlier this week threatened to deploy the National Guard as part of a crackdown on what he falsely says is rising crime in Washington, DC.
Trump’s Truth Social post on Sunday included pictures of tents and streets in Washington, DC with rubbish on them. “I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before.”
The White House declined to explain what legal authority Trump would use to evict people from the city. The Republican president controls only federal land and buildings in Washington.
Washington, DC, is ranked 15th on a list of major US cities by homeless population, according to government statistics from last year.
According to the Community Partnership, an organisation working to reduce homelessness in Washington, DC, on any given night, there are 3,782 single people experiencing homelessness in the city of about 700,000 people. These figures are down from pre-pandemic levels.
Most of the homeless people are in emergency shelters or transitional housing. About 800 are considered unsheltered or “on the street”, the organisation says.
A White House official said on Friday that more federal law enforcement officers were being deployed in the city following a violent attack on a young Trump administration staffer, which angered the president.
Crime in DC at ‘a 30-year low’
Alleged crimes investigated by federal agents on Friday night included “multiple persons carrying a pistol without license”, motorists driving on suspended licences, and dirt bike riding, according to a White House official on Sunday. The official said 450 federal law enforcement officers were deployed across the city on Saturday.
The Democratic mayor of Washington, DC, Muriel Bowser, said on Sunday that the capital was “not experiencing a crime spike”.
“We have spent over the last two years driving down violent crime in this city, driving it down to a 30-year low,” Bowser said on US media MSNBC’s news segment The Weekend.
The city’s police department reports that violent crime in the first seven months of 2025 was down by 26 percent in Washington, DC, compared with last year, while overall crime was down about 7 percent.
The city’s crime rates in 2024 were already their lowest in three decades, according to figures produced by the Department of Justice before Trump took office.
While Bowser did not directly criticise Trump in her remarks, she said that “any comparison to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and false”.
Trump’s threat to send in the National Guard comes weeks after he deployed California’s military reserve force into Los Angeles to quell protests over immigration raids, despite objections from local leaders and law enforcement.
The president has frequently mused about using the military to control US cities, many of which are under Democratic governance and hostile to his policies.
Bowser said that Trump is “very aware” of the city’s work with federal law enforcement after meeting with Trump several weeks ago in the Oval Office.
The US Congress has control of Washington, DC’s budget after the district was established in 1790 with land from neighbouring Virginia and Maryland, but resident voters elect a mayor and the City Council. Trump has long publicly chafed at this arrangement, threatening to federalise the city and give the White House the final say in how it is run.
For Trump to take over the city, Congress likely would have to pass a law revoking the legislation that established local elected leadership, which Trump would have to sign.
Trump is planning to hold a news conference on Monday to “stop violent crime in Washington, DC”. It is not clear whether he will announce more details about his eviction plan then.