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FIRST ON FOX: The Trump administration is expanding its D.C. Task Force that was launched earlier in 2025 to combat crime in the nation’s capital with a new hiring portal that’s open to law enforcement across the country, Fox News Digital has learned.
More than 2,000 law enforcement personnel support the task force on a nightly basis, which will now expand its mission with a hiring push. The administration launched a new hiring portal on Wednesday, SAFEDC.GOV, calling on law enforcement officers to apply for positions at federal agencies participating in the task force.
Hired applicants will work an initial deployment on the D.C. Task Force for up to a year, Fox News Digital learned. Those hired are eligible to receive recruitment bonuses, healthcare, federal pensions, paid leave and other benefits.
The launch of the portal comes after President Donald Trump repeatedly has celebrated the task force’s success in D.C., pointing to it as an example for other cities to clean up their own crime woes.
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Washington, D.C., was among cities nationwide to be hit by 2020’s violent crime wave that saw murders skyrocket nationally. In the following years, D.C. was rocked by shootings that left innocent children dead, a trend of juveniles committing carjackings that sometimes turned deadly, shoplifting crimes and attacks on government employees, summer interns and others, including the fatal shooting of a 21-year-old congressional intern in June.
Democrats have pushed back on Trump’s D.C. crime crackdown — and similar efforts in cities such as Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon — characterizing it as “abuse of power” and not needed as crime trends have ticked down since 2020.
“We went from the most unsafe place anywhere to a place that now people, friends are calling me up, Democrats are calling me up, and they’re saying, ‘Sir, I want to thank you. My wife and I went out to dinner last night for the first time in four years, and Washington, D.C., is safe, and you did that in four days,” Trump said in August.
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Trump signed an executive order in March establishing the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force to combat crime in the city and amplify efforts to beautify it, before signing another executive order in August declaring a crime emergency in the city and federalizing the police department.
Hundreds of National Guard troops patrol the city’s streets amid the crackdown, including at highly trafficked hubs such as Union Station.
More than 20 federal and local law enforcement agencies aid the task force, notching more than 5,000 arrests since it first began. The efforts have also led to the recovery of 14 missing children, and the removal of over 400 firearms from the city, according to White House data.
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Trump specifically called for the administration to roll out a hiring portal for the task force in a third related executive order Aug. 25, ordering the task force to “establish an online portal for Americans with law enforcement or other relevant backgrounds and experience to apply to join Federal law enforcement entities to support the policy goals described in Executive Order 14333.”
Trump is currently in the midst of a weeklong trip to Asia to meet with foreign leaders to discuss trade and regional security. He also met with U.S. troops stationed in Japan on Tuesday, when he also touted the safety of Washington, D.C., since his crime crackdown began.
“The crime is down to almost nothing. It’s a whole different ballgame. It took literally 12 days, but let’s give us a month to do it. Really, we had it drum tight and it’s a beautiful thing. And our our people in the service and you know, people don’t care if we send in our military, if we send in our National Guard, if we send in Space Command, they don’t care who the hell it is. They just want to be safe. And we have safe cities now. We’re starting in Memphis, and Memphis was a disaster,” Trump said.
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