President Donald Trump made tackling crime, particularly in cities that had become unsafe for residents due to lax sentencing and harmful sanctuary policies, a cornerstone of his administration. Data compiling crime statistics is often delayed several months, which means the FBI’s preliminary findings on crime for 2025 were just released on May 13, 2026. However, what that data shows is a steep decline in violent and property crime across several categories.
Preliminary data released by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program that covers crime statistics from over 17,000 agencies across the U.S. shows steep declines in crime from 2024 to 2025. The FBI reports an 18.5 percent decline in robbery, an 18.1 percent decline in murder and non-negligent manslaughter, a 12.4 percent decline in property crime, a 7.6 percent decline in sexual assault, and a 7.2 percent decline in aggravated assault. These numbers are preliminary numbers for 2025 and will be adjusted as the FBI compiles more data, but the trend is clear: crime numbers fell steeply in President Trump’s first year in office.
President Trump routed funding to law enforcement agencies to complete a crime crackdown and deliver on his mass deportation of illegal aliens in 2025. The One Big Beautiful Act included close to $16 billion to DHS and other law enforcement agencies to hire more staff. The bill provided Customs and Border Protection with $4 billion, Immigration and Customs Enforcement with $8 billion and the Bureau of Prisons with $3 billion.
President Trump is also implementing mass deportation of illegal aliens, focusing on illegals with criminal records. The Department of Homeland Security is focusing on arresting and deporting criminals, with DHS removing thousands of illegal aliens convicted of any number of crimes. Between December 2025 and January 2026, ICE arrested on average 1,264 illegals per day according to an analysis of DHS data from the American Immigration Council, which constitutes a 300 percent increase compared to the previous year.
According to American Immigration Council analysis of DHS data, the Trump Administration is routinely deporting around 30,000 illegal aliens per month directly from detention centers. This number does not include the numbers of illegal aliens who are “self-deporting” or choosing to return to their home countries of voluntarily.
The President and his administration have made tackling crime in Washington, D.C. a central focal point. In March 2025, President Trump enacted a crime crackdown in Washington, D.C. that has led to steep declines in crime.
Data from the Metropolitan Police Department in D.C. shows that between 2024 and 2025, crime fell steeply across the city. Homicide fell 32 percent, sex abuse crimes fell 29 percent, assault with a dangerous weapon fell ten percent, burglary fell 28 percent robbery plummeted 37 percent. These are significant, tangible drops in crime, making individuals and property significantly safer in D.C. in 2025 than they were in 2024.
Metropolitan Police Department data for the first half of 2026 shows those rates continuing to plummet. Between 2025 and 2026, homicide declined 40 percent, dropping from 57 homicides to 34 homicides. Sexual crimes fell 21 percent, dropping from 38 incidents to 30 incidents. Robbery dropped 25 percent, from 571 cases to 431 cases, and vehicle theft dropped 58 percent, from 1,931 cases to 808 cases.
The crackdown on crime in cities, support for law enforcement, and the deportation of criminal illegal aliens, are all contributing to a steep decline in crime under the Trump Administration.
This month’s preliminary findings from the FBI released midway through 2026 align with projections from the independent nonpartisan research group Council on Criminal Justice, which predicted in February of this year that once crime data was fully tabulated, 2025 would see the lowest crime rate since 1900. These projections affirm a rapid decline in crime across multiple categories over the past year and a half, indicating President Trump’s crime crackdown is finally forcing crime to trend downward.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
