The Justice Department and federal law enforcement agencies are redirecting resources from traditional priorities like terrorism and white collar crime as President Donald Trump elevates immigration enforcement.
Trump-appointed Justice Department officials have moved to reassign prosecutors to border districts and directed the Criminal Division’s Foreign Corrupt Practice Act Unit to prioritize overseas bribery related to cartels and transnational criminal organizations.
FBI joint terrorism task forces have also been told to help with “immigration-related initiatives,” while US marshals and Drug Enforcement Administration agents were given the power to make immigration arrests.
The diversions have prompted concerns from congressional Democrats and others that the immigration focus could come at the expense of the department’s other missions, potentially resulting in more plea deals and rising crime.
“It’s a decision to prioritize one set of prosecutions over others,” said Jonathan Meyer, a Sheppard Mullin partner who served as the Homeland Security Department’s general counsel during the Biden administration.
The FBI and other law enforcement components “are finite resources,” said Asha Rangappa, a former special agent with the FBI’s New York division who’s now with Yale University’s global affairs school.
“Ironically, it’s creating a national security problem at the same time that it’s purporting to address one,” she said.
Resource Diversions
The actions, announced in the first weeks of the new administration, preview an escalation of Justice Department authority to advance Trump’s desired immigration crackdown. Trump has painted migration at the southwest border as an “invasion” and pledged to deport millions of people living in the country without legal status.
“There are a number of levers that have always been theoretically possible for the Department of Justice to pull,” said Leon Fresco, a Holland & Knight partner who previously led the agency’s office of immigration litigation. “All of the levers have been yanked at the same time.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced plans in a series of memos Feb. 5 to withhold federal grant funds from sanctuary jurisdictions—echoing the first Trump administration’s policy to condition receipt of a local law enforcement grant on immigration cooperation. Local governments with so-called sanctuary policies limit collaboration between local officials and federal immigration authorities.
Bondi instructed “all litigating components” of the Justice Department and each US attorney’s office to investigate incidents where local governments impede federal immigration operations and to bring criminal charges where “supported by evidence.”
Bondi also told the Criminal Division’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act unit to prioritize foreign bribery related to cartels and transnational criminal organizations, scaling back white collar enforcement.
Her moves followed a memo from the interim deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, that directed the FBI’s joint terrorism task forces to assist with Trump’s immigration initiatives and called on a number of DOJ component agencies to review their files for biometric data on undocumented immigrants. Justice Department task forces focused on organized drug crime and local violence also were instructed to provide “focused resources and attention” to immigration-related offenses.
Immigration Focus
Temporary deployments for federal prosecutors aren’t uncommon, and the impact of the immigration focus on DOJ resources will hinge on how these memos are implemented, and which prosecutors and agents are pulled and for what types of cases.
Still, House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee wrote Justice Department leadership Feb. 4 raising concerns that diverting so many law enforcement and counterterrorism resources to focus on immigration enforcement “will endanger American lives.”
“This all-consuming focus on rounding up immigrants is not an efficient use of the Department’s resources,” the lawmakers, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), wrote.
FBI agents don’t normally handle immigration cases, and investigative techniques used in counterterrorism are “ill-suited” to the migration context, Rangappa said.
“Al Qaeda is very different from thousands of migrants crossing the border,” she said.
Pulling experienced prosecutors from other US attorneys’ offices to work on easier border crossing cases could rob resources from other areas, like white collar crime, said Daniel Richman, a Columbia Law professor and former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York.
“There’s no learning curve. There is a huge opportunity cost,” he said.
An immigration focus isn’t foreign to the Justice Department. It used to house the immigration agencies before 9/11 and still has the immigration court system.
Attorneys general under the first Trump administration wielded their authority to issue precedential decisions in immigration court cases over a dozen times to shape asylum law nationwide. A heightened focus on border crossing prosecutions was also the basis for the first administration’s zero-tolerance policy that led to separations of migrant families.
Since that first administration, Trump officials “have gotten wiser and more strategic of all the things that DOJ can do,” Fresco said.
“It took them a long time to figure that out earlier, and now they know, and they’re going to press those buttons much earlier,” he said.
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