President Trump’s FBI is back to doing what it’s supposed to do: taking down violent criminals, cartels, and predators instead of targeting conservatives and parents at school board meetings.
Deputy Director Dan Bongino announced Thursday that the FBI has arrested 14,000 violent suspects in just the first five months of 2025, a 62% increase over the same period under Biden. This includes cartel leaders, human traffickers, child predators, and anti-ICE rioters who turned cities into war zones earlier this month.
“We are mission-focused on crushing violent crime and making your neighborhoods noticeably safer,” Bongino said. “This is not a victory lap, we are doubling down hard.”
Bongino noted the FBI is on pace to help deliver a record-low U.S. murder rate for 2025, a sharp turnaround from the crime spikes under Biden and soft-on-crime local prosecutors.
Among those arrested were over 825 alleged child predators and 140 human traffickers. Bongino also highlighted a chilling emerging threat: a Satanist child predator network called “764,” with more than 250 active investigations underway as of May.
“If you’re preying on our children, we are coming for you,” Bongino said. “It’s only a matter of time.”
The agency is also pouring through data to catch rioters who torched Los Angeles and other cities after ICE raids on June 6. More than 700 rioters have already been arrested through FBI coordination with federal and state agencies.
This renewed focus on violent crime comes after years of Biden’s DOJ and FBI prioritizing ideological crackdowns while ignoring real crime. Under Biden, the FBI targeted “radical traditionalist” Catholics, investigated pro-life protesters, ignored pro-abortion domestic terrorists, and spent resources jailing Trump supporters over social media memes while letting the statute of limitations expire on Hunter Biden’s tax crimes.
Even as Biden’s DOJ tried to cut Hunter a sweetheart deal to avoid future charges, violent criminals and cartels thrived under lax enforcement and open border chaos. Now, Trump’s FBI leadership is changing course.
“We made numerous personnel and structural changes to the leadership of the FBI to ensure the mistakes of the past are not repeated,” Bongino said. “And, as a reminder, things are happening that we cannot publicly discuss. It does not mean they are not happening.”
Bongino and FBI Director Kash Patel, both Trump appointees, are working to end the political weaponization of federal law enforcement, redirecting its power toward taking down real threats while defending Americans’ constitutional rights.
This shift also addresses the revelations from whistleblowers like Steve Friend, who testified that under Biden, the FBI took him off child exploitation cases to investigate Jan. 6 protesters, using aggressive SWAT raids on nonviolent defendants while predators went free.
Trump’s FBI has refocused federal law enforcement on its core mission: protecting American communities from violent crime. This approach resonates with many Americans who felt abandoned while the previous administration targeted political enemies and ignored rising crime rates, fentanyl flooding across the border, and human trafficking rings.
As cartels continue to smuggle drugs and migrants across the southern border, the Trump administration is pairing ICE’s stepped-up deportations with a clampdown on cartel and gang operations inside the United States, working in lockstep with local law enforcement to restore law and order in American neighborhoods.
Bongino emphasized that while these results are significant, the administration’s mission is far from over.
“We will not stop until your neighborhoods are safe, your children are protected, and criminals know there is nowhere left to hide,” he said.
Bottom line: The Biden administration spent years using the FBI as a political weapon. Trump’s team is using it to lock up violent predators and criminals—and it’s working.
