Kash Patel lays out FBI's violent crime offensive: 112% arrest surge, seven Most Wanted captured in 13 months

FBI Director Kash Patel says the bureau captured seven of its Top 10 Most Wanted fugitives in just 13 months, more than the entire Biden administration managed in four years. Violent crime arrests by the FBI jumped 112 percent year over year. And the murder rate in major American cities hit a 125-year low.

Patel laid out those numbers and more in a Saturday interview with Breitbart News, painting a picture of an FBI that has been fundamentally reoriented: fewer bureaucrats in Washington, more agents on the street, and a commander in chief who actually wants criminals caught.

Agents Out of the Office, Into the Field

The core of Patel's strategy is simple enough that it shouldn't need explaining, yet apparently did for his predecessors. He moved one thousand agents out of the National Capital Region and into the field permanently. Every state in the country received additional federal law enforcement personnel. The result wasn't theoretical. It was measurable.

Patel framed the shift in terms that any cop on a beat would recognize:

"First and foremost, you need a commander in chief who's going to back the blue — and that's what we have with President Trump. He delivered us the resources and gave us a mandate to get rid of the bureaucratic handcuffs and let good cops be cops."

The numbers back up the approach. Homicide rates dropped 20 points. Robbery rates dropped 20 points. Both represent historic lows. The FBI made roughly 67,000 arrests from January 20, 2025, to January 20, 2026, compared to 22,500 in the same period a year prior, a 200 percent increase. Breitbart reported.

And then there's the Most Wanted list. Under Biden, the FBI cleared four names from the Top 10 in four years. Under the current administration, seven fugitives who had been on the run for a combined 60 years were captured in 13 months. Among them: Ryan Wedding, a Canadian Olympic snowboarder turned narcotrafficker whom agents tracked down in Mexico and brought back themselves.

"What it shows America, is how powerful and how never-ending the search is going to be. These seven individuals have been on the run for 60 collective years, 60 collective years, and we got 'em all."

Patel wasn't done: "And we're not done. We're going to keep reloading that list, and we're going to get everybody."

Gangs, Fentanyl, and Predators

The violent crime crackdown extends well beyond the Most Wanted list. Patel reported that the FBI disrupted 1,800 criminal gangs, a 210 percent increase, and seized enough fentanyl to kill 178 million Americans, a 31 percent increase year over year. Arrests of online predators targeting children surged 500 percent.

Espionage didn't escape the dragnet either. Arrests of espionage actors from Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea rose 43 percent.

"These are the violent criminals. They're looking to harm our children, our youth, and our communities…Predators online: we've seen an arrest uptick of 500 percent of the nihilistic violent extremists that wish to do harm to our children online. Our agents are motivated more than ever, and they're out there capturing criminals, not just on the streets, but in the cyber realm, and not just in the U.S., but overseas."

Patel attributed the scale of the problem directly to the prior administration's failures, noting that "crime was out of control under the prior administration" and that the Biden administration "let tons of criminals in and also was very lax on crime fighting." The sheer volume of work required in a single year, he said, reflected a security crisis that should never have been allowed to develop.

"Because for us, for the FBI to have to do that amount of work in one single year — America should never be put under that kind of security crisis."

Backing the Blue Means Protecting the Blue

Line-of-duty deaths for police officers fell 17 percent year over year, from 64 in the final year of the Biden presidency to 53 in 2025. Patel acknowledged the improvement but refused to celebrate it in isolation, saying "one line-of-duty death is one too many."

Asked about a threefold increase in arrests for assaults on federal officers, Patel made the administration's position unmistakable. Anyone who strikes a law enforcement officer carrying out lawful duties will face the full force of law enforcement. Not as rhetoric. As policy.

"We're not saying that you can't go out there and peacefully protest. We are simply saying, you strike a police officer doing his lawful duty—you cannot interfere with him in his lawful execution of his lawful duty."

Local departments have noticed. Patel said police officers and sheriffs' departments across the country report feeling more support from the FBI than ever before, and that support has encouraged deeper cooperation between local and federal law enforcement. The old dynamic, where local cops felt abandoned or second-guessed by the feds, has reversed.

Fraud Investigations Accelerate

The crime fight isn't limited to street violence. Patel detailed a growing fraud offensive led in part by Vice President JD Vance's task force targeting massive fraud schemes against the federal government.

The results are already tangible:

• A $50 million fraud takedown in California, where the FBI led arrests, and 221 hospice and home health providers were suspended
• The arrest of approximately 55 individuals last summer in Minnesot,a connected to the Feeding Our Future fraud, a $250 million scheme
• Hundreds of ongoing fraud investigations across the country

"What we're doing with President Trump's leadership and JD Vance's leadership on this task force is the FBI is prioritizing fraud investigations around the country. Because any type of government corruption and fraud is too much, and it robs the American people of precious treasure."

Patel made clear that no one gets a pass based on title or status. Elected officials and private citizens alike face the same scrutiny. And with the new Assistant Attorney General for fraud now in place, Patel predicted a significant increase in fraud arrests in the near future.

What Competent Federal Law Enforcement Looks Like

For years, the FBI's reputation suffered under leadership that seemed more interested in political investigations than in catching violent criminals. The bureau became a punchline in conservative circles, and not without reason. The transformation Patel describes is not just statistical. It's philosophical.

Move agents out of headquarters. Let cops be cops. Back them when they do the job. Pursue the worst criminals relentlessly. Treat government fraud as theft from the American people, because that's exactly what it is.

None of this required inventing new agencies or passing sweeping legislation. It required leadership that actually wanted the FBI to fight crime.

Patel closed the interview with a direct appeal to the public, urging Americans to continue sending tips to 1-800-CALL-FBI. He called the public "an invaluable partner" in solving cases daily. He also praised outgoing Attorney General Pam Bondi for her work leading the crime fight, following President Trump's decision Thursday to install Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as acting AG.

The numbers tell the story clearly enough. When you let agents do their jobs, criminals get caught. When you back the blue, officers come home safer. When you treat fraud like the crime it is, the grifters start looking over their shoulders.

Sixty collective years of running, and they got them all.