The Wall Street Journal: Trump’s Immigration Push Diverts U.S. Agents From Drug, Money and Sex-Crime Cases

The administration has set a goal of removing 3,000 migrants a day who are in the country illegally. To help meet that number, officials say, Homeland Security Investigations agents, Customs and Border Protection officers, Federal Bureau of Investigation officials and even the Postal Service have been pulled from their traditional duties to help track, detain and deport undocumented immigrants.

The change is reverberating across the federal law-enforcement system, especially in HSI, an agency in the Department of Homeland Security that has long had a focus on transnational gangs.

“It’s not a very good time to be an HSI special agent,” said Oscar Hagelsieb, a former top HSI official who retired after two decades in the field.

The Trump administration defends the pivot. Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said immigration enforcement is central to public safety. 

“Enforcing our immigration laws and removing illegal aliens is one big way President Trump is making America safe again,” she said. “But the president can walk and chew gum at the same time,” pointing to falling national murder rates and arrests of several high-profile fugitives.

Jason T. Stevens, special agent in charge of HSI El Paso, said the field office is continuing to target child exploitation through technology and international partnerships. While HSI has made immigration enforcement a core component of its operational planning to combat transnational crime since Trump’s executive order in January, Stevens said it hasn’t affected its ability to conduct enforcement actions and investigations. 

The agency’s “investigative posture has not wavered and remains focused on combating transnational crime,” he said.  

But many federal line agents say they now have to split their days, with some focusing on traditional criminal cases in the early morning and migrant-arrest operations during business hours. Border Patrol officers who once specialized in inspecting cargo are being dispatched to states as far away as Pennsylvania to hunt for undocumented workers.

“Screening, inspection, and interdiction suffer,” Jason Houser, a former ICE chief of staff, told Congress in May. He said Customs and Border Protection officers are “used to chase landscapers and line cooks 1,000 miles from the nearest border.” 

The result, they say, is fewer complex investigations, less time to build cases, and a decline in prosecutions.

Federal referrals for prosecution are falling across agencies, according to data compiled by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The Drug Enforcement Administration referred 10% fewer cases between May and June. The U.S. Marshals Service reported a nearly 13% drop; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives saw a 14% decline.

Child-exploitation cases are among those affected. Several current and former agents said investigations that require subpoenas, warrants or grand-jury testimony have been postponed or canceled outright.

Informant networks are also fraying. Building trust with sources inside drug gangs or child-trafficking rackets takes time in the field, investigators say—time they no longer have. In some cases, agents said that it has become more difficult to offer the visas that once kept informants inside the U.S. Some have resorted to asking informants to be extra careful, avoid incidents that could draw attention and to call them if they get caught up in a traffic stop. 

In Arizona and Texas, highway checkpoints run by CBP have gone unstaffed, including one on Arizona’s State Route 82, a prominent fentanyl trafficking route. Many CBP agents who used to staff them have been redirected to other states to detain migrants far from the border, said one person familiar with the situation. Ports of entry are understaffed. Some border patrol sectors are stretched thin, this person said.

The reassignments are driving senior officials out. In Houston, at least six top HSI agents have resigned in recent months, according to people familiar with the departures. Other resignations have come from Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Houston.

The drain extends beyond HSI. More than 100 FBI agents—many from counterintelligence and counterterrorism units—were reassigned this summer to Washington to join a Trump-ordered deployment. Nearly half of the arrests made under that operation have been immigration-related, officials say.

The policy shift has prompted pushback from Democrats in Congress, who have called for oversight hearings. 

Concerns have been raised about similar issues in the past. In 2019, during Trump’s first term, 19 HSI field-office chiefs wrote to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen warning against using their agents for immigration sweeps. The letter said such redeployments undermined efforts to dismantle transnational criminal organizations.

For front-line officers, the choice is stark: take on “desk cases” that require minimal fieldwork or watch as complex investigations collapse. Some agents are processing low-level narcotics cases that can be managed with paperwork rather than undercover work or informant cultivation.

The strategy of the Trump administration is to address crime through immigration enforcement, said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington.

“They think they can take care of drug trafficking, sex trafficking and child trafficking just by deporting people,” Bier said.