US President Donald Trump has said homeless people must “move out” of Washington DC as he vowed to tackle crime in the city, but the mayor pushed back against the White House likening the American capital to Baghdad in Iraq.
The Republican president has also trailed a news conference for Monday about his plan to make the city “safer and more beautiful than it ever was before”.
Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, said: “We are not experiencing a crime spike.”
Trump signed an order last month making it easier to arrest homeless people, and he last week ordered federal law enforcement into the streets of Washington DC.
“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social on Sunday. “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong.”
Alongside photos of tents and rubbish, he added: “There will be no ‘MR. NICE GUY.’ We want our Capital BACK. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
The specifics of the president’s plan are not yet clear, but in a 2022 speech he proposed moving homeless people to “high quality” tents on inexpensive land outside cities, while providing access to bathrooms and medical professionals.
On Friday, Trump ordered federal agents – including from US Park Police, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and the US Marshals Service – into Washington DC to curb what he called “totally out of control” levels of crime.
A White House official told NPR that up to 450 federal officers were deployed on Saturday night.
The administration is also considering deploying National Guard members, although Trump has not yet made a final decision, according to reports by Reuters and ABC News.
Trump’s moves come after a 19-year-old former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) was assaulted in an alleged attempted carjacking in Washington DC.
Trump vented about that incident on social media, posting a photo of the bloodied victim.
Mayor Bowser told MSNBC on Sunday: “It is true that we had a terrible spike in crime in 2023, but this is not 2023.
“We have spent over the last two years driving down violent crime in this city, driving it down to a 30-year low.”
She criticised White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller for dubbing the US capital “more violent than Baghdad”.
“Any comparison to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and false,” Bowser said.
Washington DC’s homicide rate remains relatively high per capita compared to other US cities, with a total of 98 such killings recorded so far this year. Homicides have been trending higher in the US capital from a decade ago.
But federal data from January suggests that Washington DC last year recorded its lowest overall violent crime figures – once carjacking, assault and robberies are incorporated – in 30 years.
Trump has promised a news conference at the White House on Monday to outline his plans to stop violent crime in the US capital.
In another post on Sunday, he said the event at 10:00 EDT (14:00 GMT) would address ending “crime, murder and death” in the city, as well as its “physical renovation”.
He described Bowser as “a good person who has tried”, adding that despite the mayor’s efforts, crime continued to get “worse” and the city was becoming “dirtier and less attractive”.
Community Partnership, an organisation that works to reduce homelessness in Washington DC, told Reuters that the city of 700,000 residents had about 3,782 people homeless on any given night.
Most were in public housing or emergency shelters, but about 800 were considered to be “on the street”.
As a district, rather than a state, Washington DC is overseen by the federal government, which has the power to override some local laws.
The president controls federal land and buildings in the city, although he would need Congress to assume federal control of the district.
In recent days, he has threatened to take over the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department, which Bowser argued was not possible.
“There are very specific things in our law that would allow the president to have more control over our police department,” Bowser said. “None of those conditions exist in our city right now.”
Trump has been critical of various Democratic-run city administrations during his two presidential terms.
In recent months, he has notably clashed with the Los Angeles leadership after ordering thousands of National Guard members to deal with unrest over raids on undocumented migrants.
That deployment became the subject of a legal battle which will reach a federal court in California on Monday.
