Trump's DC police takeover LIVE: National Guard occupy US capital as 850 deployed

FBI and drug enforcement agents were spotted walking the streets alongside National Guard troops as night fell over Washington DC.

President Trump took the unprecedented move of taking over the capital's police force and sending in the National Guard to end the “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” that has purportedly become rampant in the district.

However, so far, less than two dozen arrests have been made by Trump's forces. Many of these arrests, it emerged today, were made in conjunction with the FBI and other agencies.

A DEA agent told the New York Times: “We haven’t seen anything, but that’s why we’re out, is just to make sure everybody enjoys their evening.”

Charlie Kirk, a prominent MAGA conservative commentator and founder of the influential Turning Points USA, has called on Trump to "go big league" and sanction the occupation of other cities in the states.

Kirk said: "President Donald Trump, he's gotta go play to win here... The one piece of caution we'd have to say is that if we just kind of do this symbolically, we will lose. The criminals will win. We got to go hard. We gotta go big league. We're talking National Guard, tanks — every street, you need military.”

He then went on to list other Democrat-controlled cities as potential targets, adding: "Once we liberate D.C., you better believe it — Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco. We got a big military. We should be willing to use it."

The controversial media personality also hit back against descriptions of Trump's authoritarian move to take charge of the police and send in troops to DC. "We're not fascist. We're order," he told his fans after calling for tanks and troops in US cities.

National Guard troops in military Humvees were seen surrounding the iconic Washington Monument on Tuesday night, as the military force began its full-scale occupation of the US capital.

CNN reporters described the scenes as peaceful, with soldiers keeping their weapons in their vehicles as they fulfil what guardsmen have called a “logistics and administrative” mission. However, they will have the power to detain and arrest people on the spot.

One of President Trump's main objectives in his Washington DC crackdown is to clear homeless people from the streets and make the district "safer and more beautiful than it ever was before."

Trump's press secretary said the homeless "will be given the option to leave their encampment, to be taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services.”

She added: “If they refuse, they will be susceptible to fines or to jail time.”

This is likely to involve clearing the tent encampments that many of DC's homeless live in, with Trump telling these downtrodden souls, "The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY... We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital."

The crime rate in the US capital has been a talking point among Republicans for decades, with much of the DC metro area existing in stark poverty just a stone's throw from the steps of Congress.

However, amid weeks of negative stories relating to Jeffrey Epstein, President Trump made the unprecedented announcement that he was taking the Washington DC police under federal control on Monday. This was in the wake of a brutal assault in the capital, where a 19-year-old Department of Government Efficiency employee was allegedly beaten up by two 15-year-olds.

"Somebody from DOGE was very badly hurt last night. A young man who was beat up by a bunch of thugs in D.C. and either they're gonna straighten their act out in terms of government and in terms of protection or we're gonna have to federalise and run it the way its supposed to be run," Trump said on Monday.

More than 800 National Guard personnel are expected to deploy overnight in the US capital, in what President Trump has described as a bid to re-establish "law and order" in Washington DC.

The Trump administration has not elaborated on the exact role that the military reserve troops will play in law enforcement, but it is expected they will occupy and patrol areas associated with crime.

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser explained her understanding of what the National Guard will do when speaking to residents. She said: “My expectation, though it can change, is that they will deploy the guard on federal properties — that includes parks, monuments, federal buildings.

"My expectation for the higher [crime] areas that you mentioned would be for where the federal surge [law enforcement] officers would go.”