New Facts Tell the Truth: Mass Deportation Crusade Sucking FBI Agents and Focus Away from Cyber, Drug Trafficking and Sex Crime Investigations

Access online version of this press release HERE

Washington, DC — In recent weeks, America’s Voice has highlighted how this administration’s mass deportation obsession harms public safety — including diverting money and manpower away from actual public safety threats and active investigations and toward mass deportation. This week, three fresh articles hammer the same points – that this administration’s mass deportation obsession is coming at a direct cost to public safety priorities and is shifting important federal resources away from real public safety threats.

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:

“America needs national leaders who will work to bridge what divides us, calm the nation’s fears and focus on keeping all our communities safe. Unfortunately, we are witnessing just the opposite. Instead, this administration is focused on political retribution, stoking division, scapegoating immigrants, and pursuing a mass deportation crusade that harms public safety. The massive diversion of money and manpower comes at a great cost from the real needs of the American people.”

Among the key new coverage of how this administration’s mass deportation obsession threatens key public safety priorities:

• The Wall Street Journal, “Trump’s Immigration Push Diverts U.S. Agents From Drug, Money and Sex-Crime Cases” noted, “Thousands of federal agents once tasked with investigating drug smuggling, sexual exploitation and organized crime have been redirected to immigration enforcement under President Trump’s second-term push to accelerate deportations, according to current and former officials.”

• The Washington Post, “A quarter of FBI agents are assigned to immigration enforcement, per FBI data” noted, “The large number of reassignments — about 3,000 agents — reflect a vast reshaping of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, which has focused on national security threats since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The intense focus on immigration has raised alarm among current and former FBI agents who say morale is low across the bureau as agents have less time to dedicate to the often-complex cases they were hired to work on.”

• Bloomberg, “Homeland Security Cyber Personnel Reassigned to Jobs in Trump’s Deportation Push” noted, “Compulsory reassignments have gone in recent weeks to workers within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, who had focused on issuing alerts about threats against US agencies and critical infrastructure, current and former employees said. They described the orders on condition of anonymity over fears of retaliation.”

• The Marshall Project, “For Trump Administration, Fighting Crime Takes a Backseat to Immigration Arrests” Former ICE Chief of Staff under the Biden administration Jason Houser stated the shift in priorities has larger implications for the law enforcement work federal officers do, noting, “It’s a good time to be an American-born criminal. When the FBI, DEA, ATF are all doing checkpoints in [Chicago’s] Little Italy tomorrow, the human trafficking, the sex trafficking, the Jeffrey Epsteins, the fentanyl traffickers — they don’t quit.”

• El País, “The diversion of federal agents to deportations hampers the fight against human trafficking” noted, “According to data obtained by the CATO Institute, 42,153 individuals, including 28,390 from federal law enforcement agencies, have been diverted to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “This transfer has significantly reduced the government’s ability to address criminal activity in the United States,” said David J. Bier, director of Immigration Studies, when presenting the data.”

Additional Resources

• Read the AV’s fact sheet: “Trump’s Immigration Enforcement Dragnet Is Undermining Public Safety Across America”

• Watch a recording of the recent America’s Voice virtual press event featuring law enforcement experts and former federal officials discussing the public safety harms of the administration’s mass deportation agenda and intent to keep Americans divided at a time of heightened political violence.