Trump announces FBI to stay in Washington, nixing Maryland plan

Katharine Wilson, Baltimore Sun on Jul 1, 2025

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The Trump Administration announced a plan Tuesday for the FBI headquarters to move to a new location in downtown Washington, D.C., instead of the planned relocation in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen told The Baltimore Sun that his office was notified Tuesday morning that Congress will be asked to approve a reprogramming request for the use of funds set aside for the planned Greenbelt FBI headquarters.

“We will fight this,” Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, said in an interview.

Trump plans to move the agency to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, which houses the U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement Agency, the gutted United States Agency for International Development and event spaces. The FBI is currently housed in the aging J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington.

In a release from the General Services Administration, the reason for the switch was the cost of creating a new suburban campus. The release adds that the Ronald Reagan Building “provides a world-class facility that supports the FBI’s critical mission and saves money for taxpayers.”

Maryland won a bid for the department in November 2023, after the General Services Administration selected the site over Landover, Md., and Springfield, Va. The location is next to the Greenbelt Metro Station.

Trump said in March that he did not want the headquarters to move to Maryland, arguing that the FBI and the Department of Justice should be close to one another.

“They were going to build it … in Maryland, a liberal state, but that has no bearing on what I’m about to say. But we’re going to stop it,” Trump said.

Van Hollen said that the Ronald Reagan Building does not meet the security requirements — like a campus setup in the Greenbelt plan — needed for an agency like the FBI.

“There’s a reason the Greenbelt site was selected,” Van Hollen said. “It met the security needs of the men and women of the FBI and the mission requirements.”

Maryland Democrats condemned Trump’s plan to move the headquarters, writing that the president is “undermining Congressional intent and dealing a blow to the men and women of the FBI” in a Tuesday joint statement from Gov. Wes Moore, Van Hollen, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy, and Reps. Glenn Ivey, Kweisi Mfume, Jamie Raskin, Sarah Elfreth, and Johnny Olszewski.

The Democrats argued that a headquarters in Washington would not “satisfy their security needs” and “ignore the real threats the Bureau faces.”

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