Federal agents tasked with tracking child abusers are now being reassigned to target undocumented immigrants in the United States after President Donald Trump ramped up immigration crackdown.
Homeland Security investigators who specialise in money laundering are raiding restaurants and other small businesses looking for immigrants who aren’t authorised to work.
Agents who pursue drug traffickers and tax fraud are being reassigned to enforce immigration law.
As U.S. President Donald Trump pledges to deport “millions and millions” of “criminal aliens,” thousands of federal law enforcement agents from multiple agencies are being enlisted to take on new work as immigration enforcers, pulling crime-fighting resources away on other areas — from drug trafficking and terrorism to sexual abuse and fraud.
This account of Trump’s push to reorganise federal law enforcement – the most significant since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks – is based on interviews with more than 20 current and former federal agents, attorneys and other federal officials. Most had first-hand knowledge of the changes. Nearly all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss their work.
“I do not recall ever seeing this wide a spectrum of federal government resources all being turned toward immigration enforcement,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former Homeland Security official who has served in both Republican and Democratic administrations. “When you’re telling agencies to stop what you’ve been doing and do this now, whatever else they were doing takes a back seat.”
In response to questions from Reuters, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the U.S. government is “mobilizing federal and state law enforcement to find, arrest, and deport illegal aliens.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to respond to questions about its staffing. In a statement, the FBI said it is “protecting the U.S. from many threats.” The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
No Comprehensive Accounting Of Revamp
The Trump administration has offered no comprehensive accounting of the revamp. But it echoes the aftermath of the 2001 attacks, when Congress created the Department of Homeland Security that pulled together 169,000 federal employees from other agencies and refocused the FBI on battling terrorism.
Trump’s hardline approach to deporting immigrants has intensified America’s already-stark partisan divide. The U.S. Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, described the crackdown as a “wasteful, misguided diversion of resources.” In a statement to Reuters, he said it was “making America less safe” by drawing agents and officials away from fighting corporate fraud, terrorism, child sexual exploitation and other crimes.
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, in an interview with Reuters, denied the changes across federal law enforcement were hindering other important criminal investigations. “I completely reject the idea that because we’re prioritizing immigration that we are not simultaneously full-force going after violent crime.”
He said the crackdown was warranted. “President Trump views what has happened over the last couple of years truly as an invasion, so that’s how we’re trying to remedy that.”
Trump’s Immigration Crackdown
On January 20, his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to team up to fight “an invasion” of illegal immigrants. He cast the nation’s estimated 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally as the driving factor behind crime, gang violence and drug trafficking – assertions not supported by government statistics – and accused immigrants of draining U.S. government resources and depriving citizens of jobs.
Almost immediately, federal law enforcement started posting photos of the crackdown to social media: agents wore body armour and jackets emblazoned with names of multiple agencies – including the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, known as ATF – during raids on immigrants without proper legal status.
Before this year, ATF had played almost no role in immigration enforcement. It typically investigated firearms offences, bombings, arson and illicit shipments of alcohol and tobacco.
But since Trump’s inauguration, about 80% of its roughly 2,500 agents have been ordered to take on at least some immigration enforcement tasks, two officials familiar with ATF’s operations said. The ATF agents are being used largely as “fugitive hunters” to find migrants living in the U.S. illegally, one of the officials said.
The DEA, whose roughly 10,000 staff have led the nation’s efforts to battle drug cartels, has shifted about a quarter of its work to immigration operations, said a former official briefed by current DEA leaders on the changes. Two other former officials described the commitment as “substantial” but did not know precisely how much work shifted.
(With inputs from Reuters)
