Washington, DC residents press Congress to end Trump’s federal law enforcement surge

Some Washington, D.C. residents fanned out across the halls of Congress on Thursday, urging lawmakers to end President Donald Trump’s federal law enforcement surge in the nation’s capital.

The demonstrations came the same day the U.S. Army extended orders for the Washington, D.C., National Guard to remain on active duty in the nation’s capital through Nov. 30, two U.S. officials told ABC News.

In small groups of five, demonstrators carried a letter from advocacy group “Free DC” to congressional offices calling on lawmakers to “do everything in your power to end the occupation of Washington, D.C., as swiftly as possible.”

The letter, obtained by ABC News, described Trump’s declaration as “an ongoing and increasing danger to D.C. residents” and a “direct threat to democracy in the United States and the governing power of the U.S. Congress.”

“This is an active military takeover of the capital. It is a textbook indicator of backsliding democracy and intensifying authoritarianism,” the letter stated. “This might come off as alarmist, but in the last 100 years of history, the pattern is clear and we are witnessing it in real time.”

White House Spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to ABC News on Thursday, “Cracking down on crime should not be a partisan issue, but some Democrats and activists are trying to make it one.”

“It’s bizarre that these liberal activists would protest the significant drops in violent crime in DC thanks to President Trump’s historic effort to Make DC Safe Again,” Jackson said.

The activists also pressed lawmakers to reject nearly a dozen Republican-backed bills that would expand federal power in the District. Some D.C. residents paired up with seasoned organizers to knock on doors and meet congressional staffers.

“I just feel like our democracy is slipping away,” said Michelle Castro, who has lived in D.C. for 24 years but said she stepped inside the Capitol for the first time Thursday.

Castro, the daughter of an Air Force veteran, joined the advocacy group Free D.C. after the deployment of armed troops. “As a military family, seeing the troops in the streets is very upsetting,” she told ABC News. “To see our military being used as political tools is just wrong. It’s not American. It’s not why they signed up.”

Castro said she had attended rallies before but never lobbied lawmakers. For many D.C. residents, the nation’s capital can feel like two separate cities, one for politics and federal workers, and another where locals live without voting representation in Congress beyond Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton.

“As a D.C. resident, just feeling like there’s no one, I don’t have a person to go to their office or to call,” Castro said. “Whenever they’re like, ‘Call your reps,’ I’m like, who do I call?”

For others, the deployment stirred painful family memories. Julie Cruz, who said her great-grandparents were murdered by the Nazis, said she grew up visiting relatives in East Germany and seeing Russian soldiers with machine guns on the streets.

“I personally find it very traumatizing to see troops occupying our city,” she said. “They should be going home to their families and their communities.”

Not everyone is protesting the law enforcement surge in the District.

“D.C. became one of America’s most dangerous cities because of failed, soft-on-crime policies that devastated innocent families while coddling the very criminals terrorizing our states and it made our capitol unsafe for residents, for visitors, for members of Congress, and unfortunately, even for our interns and our staff,” said Republican Rep. Ron Estes.

In June, one of Estes’ interns, 21-year-old Eric Tarpinian-Jachym of Granby, Massachusetts, was fatally shot.

“We’re having to turn our attention in Congress on doing what the District of Columbia, its mayor and their leadership should have done long ago, and that’s to keep the city safe,” the congressman said.

Tarpinian-Jachym’s killing remains unsolved. Authorities have offered a $40,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.

“President Trump has rightfully exercised his authority to restore law and order here over the last few weeks, and what a tremendous job our federal law enforcement officers have done for this city,” he said. “This is what happens when you have leadership that actually cares about public safety,” he added.

The D.C. Police Union, which represents the members of the Metropolitan Police Department, welcomed Trump’s move, saying the department hit a 50-year low in staffing and needed the federal help.

Union chairman Gregg Pemberton said the federal surge has made D.C. officers’ jobs “easier.”

“You have more law enforcement officers, you have less work, you have less crime,” he said.

He added, “We want to get back to a place where MPD is doing 100% of this job.”

Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, whose careful rhetoric has drawn both Trump’s praise and activists’ scorn, has been negotiating with the administration as she tries to protect the city’s limited autonomy.

On Tuesday, Bowser released a new order, which she called a plan for exiting the crime emergency declared by Trump. The mayor’s plan calls for continuing the work of the “Safe and Beautiful Emergency Operations Center,” which Bowser’s office says will manage the city’s response after the initial 30-day lapses.

“My 100% focus is on exiting the emergency and that’s where all of our energies are,” Bowser said. “I think in creating the EOC, we mean to demonstrate … that we are organized to best use our own public safety resources and any additional public safety resources, and I think that’s the message for the Congress.”

Still, tensions are high. Several residents have circulated a “no confidence” letter targeting Bowser’s leadership, while local activists and even some council members blasted her for thanking Trump for the surge of federal law enforcement, which brought down crime.

On Wednesday, D.C.-based politicians met privately with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who pledged to help with their efforts in the Senate. Maryland Democratic Rep. Glenn Ivey, recalling Washington’s violent crack epidemic in the 1990s, said federal intervention was not the answer.

“When I first became a prosecutor here in Washington, D.C., it was 1990, that was the height of the crack fight, 450 to 500 homicides per year,” Ivey said. “They called it Dodge City. We fought against that, and under home rule, the leadership turned it around. Now we’ve got some of the lowest crime rates in 30 years.”

Council member Robert White called D.C. “ground zero for saving democracy.”

“It is clear the president has said he is doing this in Maryland and New York and California, now in Louisiana,” White said. “So democracy will be stripped away everywhere, not just in D.C. We just happen to be ground zero. That is why we must stop it now.”

Council member Janeese Lewis George urged unity: “We need to be strong, and we need to be united. Home rule in the District is what we are fighting for. That is all of our North Star.”