Nearly half of FBI agents have been reassigned to major immigration enforcement offices FBI
Nearly half of FBI agents working in major U.S. field offices have been reassigned to assist with immigration enforcement, according to newly released data, a stunning shift in law enforcement priorities that has raised public safety concerns.
Personnel data obtained by Mark Warner, a Democratic senator, and shared with The Guardian, indicates that the Trump administration has moved 45% of FBI agents in the nation’s 25 largest field offices to support the Department of Homeland Security’s crackdown on immigration. Across all FBI offices, 23% of the bureau’s roughly 13,000 agents now work in immigration, according to Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
FBI agents now deployed alongside an ICE agent have been taken away from their work handling the matter, Warner’s office said. Cyber crimesand drug trafficking, terrorism, espionage, violent crimes, counterintelligence and other efforts that are part of the office’s mission — some areas that Trump has claimed are White House priorities.
Data first According to the Washington PostHe notes that the FBI is dramatically shifting its targets in an effort to support Trump’s increasingly aggressive immigration raids, as the administration targets 3,000 daily apprehensions and seeks to expand its detention capacity to detain more than 100,000 immigrants.
The data does not reflect the scale of the reorganization process, with the FBI only providing statistics for agents who now spend more than half their work enforcing immigration proceedings, according to Warner. The senator’s office said it is likely that more than a quarter of FBI agents’ total hours are now dedicated to immigration, and that in some field offices, more than half of the agents have been redirected to the Department of Homeland Security.
“When you pull a quarter of the FBI’s top agents from the front lines of fighting terrorists, spies, drug traffickers, and violent criminals, the consequences are clear: critical national security work is sidelined, and our country is put at greater risk,” Warner said in a statement.
The FBI’s transformation has raised concerns about the potential consequences for communities targeted in immigration raids and the impact on the work the bureau is abandoning, experts said.
Mike German, a former FBI agent and civil liberties advocate, said it was unprecedented for the bureau to redirect so many agents to a mission that is not part of the FBI’s mandate. Some agents may be eager to support the president’s immigration agenda while others are likely to oppose the redirection. “Part of the reason the FBI leadership is doing it on this scale is to separate those two — to determine who are loyalists and who are potential obstacles to the administration’s goals,” he said.
German said the move is in line with FBI Director Kash Patel’s efforts to purge the office of agents deemed disloyal to Trump, noting Reports terminating employees involved in the January 6 investigation.
FBI agents are generally trained as investigators who may make targeted arrests, a job that differs significantly from that of many immigration enforcement officers, which can lead to problems in the field during immigration raids, he said. “Just jumping in an SUV with a bunch of armed guys and driving around the streets until you see someone running away is inherently a more dangerous type of activity that they’re not well trained for,” German said.
There has been widespread documentation of the violent and random nature of the ice raids, which were often carried out by masked men and sometimes led to the arrest of U.S. citizens, and adding FBI personnel to the mix could exacerbate the chaos and potential for abuse, the former agent said.
The exact duties and responsibilities of the FBI agents now working alongside Ace are unclear. Spokespeople for the Department of Homeland Security, ACE, the FBI and the Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.
German, an FBI whistleblower who has spoken publicly about… Civil rights violations Of the bureau’s intelligence work, he said he was most concerned about the agency – Stay away from public corruption and White collar crimeAnd crimes that state and local agencies don’t have the capacity to address: “That’s where the real damage will come.”
Current and former FBI agents He told the Washington Post There were growing concerns about low morale within the agency and that agents were overstretched, which could hamper national security investigations and complex cases.
The shift in priorities is similar to the reorganization of the FBI after September 11, when counterterrorism became the main focus, said Kenneth Gray, a former FBI agent and professor of practice in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of New Haven.
“The bureau can tolerate a temporary change in its priorities, but in the long run, if agents continue to work on immigration matters, rather than counterterrorism, foreign intelligence or cybercrime, that could end up bothering us for a long time,” said Gray, who worked at the bureau for 24 years before leaving in 2012. “The next 9/11 could happen if agents who were working on counterterrorism are diverted.”
However, Gray said he’s not worried about the temporary shift while DHS quickly recruits new ice officers.
US Attorney Pam Bondi defended redirecting FBI resources toward immigration enforcement in a tense Senate hearing earlier this week when Democrats accused her of using the Justice Department as a weapon. FBI agents, she He saidwere working daily with the Department of Homeland Security to “keep Americans safe and get illegal aliens out of our country.”