WASHINGTON — In a city obsessed with the trappings of power, they are the ultimate status symbol: the wire-wearing, black S.U.V.-driving protective crews that come with high-level government service.

So when it came to light last week that the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had ordered the United States Marshals Service to extend a full protective detail to Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, for as much as $1 million a month, many people began to wonder about the protective pecking order in the Trump era.

The answer, given the nature of the job, is difficult to know. Security forces are loath to discuss much about who they protect or what it costs, for fear, they say, of compromising their mission.

But when the billionaire Wilbur L. Ross Jr., the commerce secretary, goes to dinner at a fancy Georgetown restaurant, bodyguards sit nearby. When members of Congress practice in the early mornings in an Alexandria, Va., public park for their Congressional Baseball Game, plainclothes United States Capitol Police are sitting there in a black S.U.V.