McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — A nonprofit that assists migrants says it has tracked a disproportionate number of federal workers being reassigned to help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out immigration arrests and deportations, and they question whether American communities are safe.
America’s Voice this week released a report that says 80%, or 2,000, of the 2,500 agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) have been reassigned from investigating gun trafficking, bombings and arson to immigration enforcement.
The report comes as Democrats in Congress are questioning whether reassignments for law enforcement agents to immigration cases are affecting the safety of American communities, which Trump officials strongly deny.
The report, “FACT SHEET: Trump’s Immigration Enforcement Dragnet Is Undermining Public Safety Across America,” published Wednesday, says about 25% of operations at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) “have shifted from targeting drug cartels and fentanyl traffickers to carrying out immigration raids.”
Other personnel changes reported by America’s Voice include:
- FBI agents now spend one-third of their time on immigration cases “while white-collar crime and violent crime investigations take a backseat.”
- 20% of staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have been eliminated and first-responder training curtailed “while employees are reassigned to support ICE operations.”
- U.S. Attorneys in all 93 districts are ordered to shift staff to border enforcement.
- All 6,000 agents for ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) are now focused on human trafficking and deportation cases.
“From deploying the military and masked ICE agents into American communities — where they are operating without any shred of accountability — to diverting money and manpower away from active investigations and real threats and disaster preparedness efforts — and they’re moving all that to out-of-control immigration enforcement. This masked deportation crusade is harming public safety and it’s making all of us less safe,” Joanna Kuebler, chief of programs for America’s Voice, said Wednesday in a call with reporters.
During a heated Sept. 16 Senate oversight hearing, Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, told FBI Director Kash Patel that “20% of all agents have been diverted from their work to assist ICE immigration enforcement.”
Booker was citing a Cato Institute report earlier this month that says ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) is receiving assistance from nearly 17,000 non-ERO agents,
“Part of this operation is the work of masked law enforcement who jump out of cars, snatch people off streets, at work, school and hospitals,” Booker said.
Booker asked Patel if any FBI agents who investigate crimes against children whether they had been assigned to immigration enforcement.
Patel denied the statement and quickly responded: “The premise of what you say is entirely false. No. No. No. You don’t get to say America is less safe under this leadership. America is safer because of the work of the FBI.”
“I believe you have made our country weaker and less safe. I believe that we are more vulnerable to a major event and I pray to God it doesn’t happen,” Booker said. “Twenty percent of FBI agents are doing low-level immigration enforcement instead of their mission-critical work.”
Rafael Lemaitre, former director of public affairs at FEMA, said, in response to the report: “Every dollar DHS diverts away from FEMA and towards mass deportations is a dollar taken away from disaster survivors and vulnerable communities.”
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.
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