US President Donald Trump has stepped up criticism of the security situation in Washington, D.C., and has now argued that the US capital has a higher murder rate than some Latin American capitals, such as Bogota, Mexico City and Lima.
At a press conference Monday, Trump announced that he had “put the Metropolitan Police Department directly under federal control” and announced that he would deploy an 800-person National Guard to “recover the city.”
“The murder rates in Washington today are higher than Colombia, Bogota, Mexico City, or some of the places we hear are the worst places on the planet. That’s far higher,” Trump said.
Trump said the move to “liberate” Washington is part of a broader initiative to “regain control” the city he said was threatened by violence.
“You want to live in such a place because everything is double or triple? I don’t think so,” the president noted the fact that Washington surpasses Latin American cities such as Brasilia, Panama City, and San Jose in homicide rates.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser called for Trump’s decision to put the Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and deploy the National Guard “without distrust and unprecedented.” She said she wasn’t completely surprised, but warned at a press conference that “we will not minimize the invasion of autonomy.”
Bowser also assures residents that local governments continue to operate “in a way that makes their citizens proud,” and has since met with Attorney General Pam Bondy, who has the authority to be delegated by Trump to coordinate actions with the city, according to the executive order. The mayor also revealed that “nothing has changed” on the Metropolitan Police Department’s organizational chart.
Trump is based on a 2024 correspondence graph. This shows a murder rate of 27.5 per 100,000 Washington residents. According to him, there are numbers that place it above Colombia, Panama City, Panama (15), San Jose, Costa Rica (13), Mexico City (15), Mexico, Peru, Peru, Peru (7.7), San Jose, Costa Rica (15), and Lama (15). (6.8).
Official statistics for all these cities, obtained from organizations such as INEGI in Mexico, the Panama prosecutor’s office and the Brazilian capital, Brasilia, appear to confirm Trump’s statement.
However, the latest official data reflects more subtle images.
According to an analysis by CNN journalist Daniel Dale, Washington’s crimes have fallen significantly after 274 murders were recorded in 2023, the highest number in over 20 years.
In 2024, murders fell to 187, and so far in 2025 they have continued to decline. Data from crime expert Jeff Asher cited by Dale shows that Washington’s murders have fallen 34% from July this year, from 2023. Furthermore, the violent crime rate in 2024 was the second lowest since 1966.
A preliminary analysis by the Washington Metropolitan Police Department confirms this trend. Overall crime has also declined in 2025, along with the sustained decline seen in other major U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
