Operation Summer Heat brings crime to an all-time low, Trump says 

America enjoyed the “safest and most peaceful summer in two decades,” President Donald Trump said at a press conference on Wednesday in the Oval Office. 

“Every American deserves to live in a city without fear of being mugged, murdered, raped or shot,” he also said. 

Arrests increased 250% under “Operation Summer Heat,” intended to “crush” violent crime across all 50 states, the president said.  

The operation allied the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to arrest more than 8,000 violent criminals over three months in major cities, including New Orleans and Nashville. 

Violent crime declined by 20% since this time a year ago, Trump said, adding that 23,000 criminals, including “11,000 murderers,” have been arrested since the beginning of his second term. 

FBI Director Kash Patel said the past seven months of the Trump administration saw the “best numbers for fighting crime in U.S. history.” 

In the past three months specifically, the FBI confiscated more than 2,200 firearms in illegal possession and more than 421 kilograms of fentanyl – enough to “kill 55 million Americans alone,” Patel said. 

“You let good cops be cops, and you partnered us with the right people, the Department of Justice, to put the handcuffs on and bring them [criminals] to court and put them in prison,” he told the president.  

Patel also thanked Trump for securing pay checks for FBI workers despite the government shutdown. 

In seven months, the FBI seized more than 1,900 kilograms of fentanyl – totaling 127 million lethal doses, Patel said. The FBI has also located more than 5,400 missing children and boosted national security with the increase of espionage-related arrests by 50% in China and Iran, he reported. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives under the DOJ has seized more than 25,000 illegal guns in the past seven months.  

Bondi said men and women in law enforcement have thanked her and the president for taking “the handcuffs off” and letting “cops be cops.”  

She said Operation Summer Heat has “set the stage for Memphis,” where a federal crackdown led to nearly 70 arrests Tuesday night alone. 

“There were 12 guns seized, and there was a 70-year-old man arrested as a result of our operation in Memphis who raped a child under the age of three,” Bondi said. “That one case makes everything we’re doing worthwhile.” 

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche shared about specific missions from the summer operation, explaining how a “drug den” operating out of a hotel in Alaska was dismantled. 

“Summer Heat went in there, not only arrested all the participants that were controlling the hotel, but seized the hotel,” Blanche said. 

Operation Summer Heat also uprooted a “narcotics trafficking group,” that was flying pills of fentanyl in suitcases from the southern border to the state of Washington, Blanche said. 

“Every one of these arrests means that our streets are safer, and that’s because of the work of this administration, of President Trump and Director Patel,” he said.  

Trump promised to continue the efforts against crime to “make American safe again.”  

“We’re going to save all of our cities, and we’re going to make them essentially crime free,” Trump declared.