Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum has affirmed claims made by Donald Trump that Washington DC had a higher murder rate than Mexico City, a statistic used by the US leader to justify his takeover of policing in the US capital.
“He said something like ‘Washington is more unsafe than Mexico City,’ which is true,” Sheinbaum said on Tuesday. “What we don’t agree with is when he said that it’s the most unsafe city in Latin America.”
Sheinbaum’s comments came after the US president announced on Monday that he had ordered the national guard to Washington DC and seized control of the city’s police force, describing the US capital as “one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world”.
“The murder rate in Washington today is higher than that of Bogotá, Colombia, Mexico City, some of the places that you hear about as being the worst places on Earth,” Trump said.
Some of Trump’s claims were overblown or patently false. “Trump frequently brings out numbers that are exaggerated and that distort reality,” said Eduardo Guerrero, a Mexican security analyst.
While DC does have a high murder rate, the justice department noted that violent crime dropped 35% from 2023 to 2024 and is at “the lowest it has been in over 30 years”. Meanwhile, there are at least 49 cities in the world with higher homicide rates than the US capital.
However, his comparison to Latin American capitals was mostly accurate, and unwittingly pointing to the fact that many of these cities – which have stereotypically been viewed as deadly, crime-infested places to live – have become safer than some US metropolises.
Mexico City’s homicide rate in 2024 was 10 per 100,000 residents, according to government figures, versus 27.5 per 100,000 for Washington DC. Meanwhile Bogota had a homicide rate of 15.2 and Lima saw 7.7 per 100,000.
“Mexico City has a third of the homicides that Washington has,” said Mexico City’s mayor Clara Brugada. “It’s very important to clarify this because otherwise it could be misinterpreted, and people could think that Mexico City has one of the highest homicide rates in the Americas, and that’s just not true.”
Despite its relatively low homicide rate, however, Mexico City did report nearly 1,300 missing or disappeared people last year, some of whom may be murder victims whose bodies were never found.
Guerrero said that Mexico City, with its large, centralized police force, its lower rates of extortion to organized crime, its state monitoring over taxi fleets, and the access it affords to centers for professional training and education, is unique in the country, which is still wrestling surging levels of violence fueled by organized crime.
The neighboring state of Mexico, for example, has a homicide rate of 19 per 100,000, nearly double that of the capital’s, and nationwide, Mexico had an overall homicide rate of 24 per 100,000 in 2023 – a rate more than six times higher than that of the US.
“Mexico City is a kind of island of tranquility when we compare it with the rest of the country,” said Guerrero.
Leaders in other Latin American countries also took issue with Trump’s use of their capitals as a point of comparison for his vision of Washington DC as a place of “crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor and worse”.
Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, said on X: “President Trump should know, and if not someone should tell him, that Bogotá is one of the places on earth where not a single child dies of hunger. That makes it one of the best places on earth.”
Ibaneis Rocha, the governor of the federal district encompassing Brazil’s capital, Brasília, posted a long letter to the US president on X disputing Trump’s claims that the city was among the world’s most violent.
“It is necessary to clarify, based on official data, that this perception does not reflect the reality of the Brazilian capital,” said Rocha, listing a series of government programs aimed at reducing violent crime. “The management of public security in the Federal District is, in essence, aligned with a vision of ‘law and order,’ reinforcing that the resolute fight against crime, combined with social policies with real impact, is the path to a safe and prosperous society.”
According to Rocha, last year, Brasília had a homicide rate of 6.9 per 100,000 residents, the third lowest among Brazilian state capitals and almost four times lower than that of Washington DC.
