US President Donald Trump, with his stringent grasp on deportation rules, promised to make Washington DC safer and more beautiful. In a post on Truth Social, he called for the ‘immediate’ displacement of the homeless population and threatened that “there will no longer be Mr Nice Guy.”
Sharing images of tents in public spaces, he urged that the “homeless have to move out” and added that they will be provided spaces to stay, but “far from the Capital.” This comes after Trump signed an order last month that made it easier to arrest the homeless, in an attempt to reduce crime.
The criminals, however, he claimed, didn’t have to “move out.” The President announced that they would be going to jail, “where they belong”. While the specifics of his plan of action are not made public yet, he slammed Mayor of DC Muriel Bowser in a press conference on “Crime and Beautification.” In a separate post on social media, he compared his plans about the homeless to how he “took care of the Border” during his second term in office.
Trump’s attempts to curb crime
Last week, in an attempt to curb ‘totally out of control’ levels of crime, Trump had ordered federal agents into Washington. The officials from the US Park Police, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, and the US Marshals Service were among the 450 officers deployed on the weekend.
It was triggered by an attack on a former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee. He was reportedly assaulted in a car-theft incident in Washington by a 19-year-old.
‘Violent Crime down to 30-year-low’
Negating claims by the Trump administration, Mayor of DC, Bowser told MSNBC that the last two years have been spent “driving down violent crime…to a 30-year low.” While acknowledging the spike in spike in 2023, she said that “this is not 2023.”
She also slammed White House chief of staff Stephen Miller for calling the crime in the US ‘more violent than Baghdad,’ calling it a ‘hyperbolic and false’ claim.
Crime in the US
Despite the claims made by political leaders, there has been a significant number of racial profiling hate crimes against immigrants over the past two months. A “mass shooting” was reported on August 9 in Baltimore, which took the lives of at least 6 people, including an infant.
In a separate incident on the same day, chaos broke out in New York’s Times Square when a video went viral. The Police confirmed that three people were shot, and the suspect was reportedly a minor. This comes amid stricter norms for immigration from the US Border Patrol, threatening arrests for non-conformity.