WASHINGTON — The radical left is getting increasingly violent with President Donald Trump back in the White House, even toward federal law enforcement officers, newly released FBI data shows.
The FBI revealed exclusively to Breitbart News on Tuesday that arrests for assaults on federal officers—AFOs as they are known to law enforcement—have surged threefold since Trump took over from Democrat President Joe Biden. In addition to the radical left getting increasingly violent, FBI director Kash Patel also attributes the increase to the Trump administration actually protecting federal law enforcement officers when previous presidents like Biden did not.
“The FBI has tripled our number of arrests for Assault on Federal Officers this year compared to the previous administration, and that is no accident,” Patel told Breitbart News in an exclusive statement. “President Trump and his administration have put a premium on supporting the men and women who go out in the field and do the hard work of cleaning up our streets, and the FBI is proud to be a part of that mission. We will continue our push to crush violent crime all across this country and support our partners doing the same. Anyone who comes after an officer fulfilling their duties will be met with the full weight of justice under this FBI.”
The data, which ranges from February 1 to November 19 in both 2024 and 2025, shows stark increases in such arrests year over year. In Biden’s last year in office, there were 193 incidents of what are called 89B—assault on a federal officer—and 14 incidents of 89E, or impeding a federal officer. There were only 55 arrests during that time frame in 2024.
In 2025 during that time frame though, with Trump back in the White House, the FBI statistics provided by the Bureau to Breitbart News exclusively show that there were 375 incidents of the more severe 89B assault on a federal officer and 56 instances of 89E impeding a federal officer. During this time frame, there were 187 arrests.
Those 187 arrests represent a more than threefold increase over 55, which is the number of arrests during the end of the Biden administration.
The FBI also told Breitbart News that the top FBI offices by volume where these arrests happened are in the following cities: Chicago, Washington DC, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Portland. Trump, of course, for some time took over law enforcement in the nation’s capital and surged federal officers and National Guard troops to help combat crime in D.C. There has been intense focus on whether or not he would do something similar in these other cities, particularly Chicago, and of course federal law enforcement officials have been aggressively targeting enforcement of immigration law to remove criminal illegal aliens across all of those cities and more nationwide.
“This FBI is proud to work with our federal, state, and local partners all across the country to crush violent crime and deliver historic results in making America safe again — and we will continue to aggressively pursue those who attack law enforcement simply for doing their jobs,” FBI spokesman Ben Williamson added in a statement to Breitbart News.
