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Federal agents, who until now have focused on locating child predators, are broadening their scope to include illegal immigrants.

The investigators working for the Department of Homeland Security dedicated to MONEY laundering are now storming into restaurants and other small businesses toy father immigrants who are not work permitted.

Drug crimes and tax evasion investigators are being moved to integrate immigration control enforcement.

As President Trump extends his commitment to remove, 'millions and millions,' of 'criminal aliens,' thousands of armed federal officials from many agencies are being spun up to do business as immigration officers, diverting precious resources away from other priorities including drugs, terrorism, sexual violence, and frauds.

This is how Trump seeks to implement reorganizing deportation law enforcement, an issue which is being tackled for the first time after the 911 attack – based on more than twenty current and former federal agents, attorneys, and border patrol officials I spoke with. Most knew how things worked, but were restricted on how to express it. The majority operated under the veil due to lack of permission to describe their duties.

I do not recall seeing so many federal resources in one place that have to do with immigration enforcement. For this, I will single out an economist Theresa Cardinal from the Brown University who worked as a Trump’s Administration Economics advisor. ‘All these agencies are likely to set aside what they have been doing for reclined periods, which is probably why they have been told to do so. When you order them to do this now, that’s all takes a back seat.’“It is doing a lot.” The designate of the Head of Customs and Border Protection Department, Trisha Mc-Laughlin, said in response to Reuters inquiries: ‘It is mobilizing federal and state law enforcement to find, arrest and deport illegal alien’. And there is Mikhail Mikhailov, now I’m going out of my mind, looking for information on what the FBI says. At the same time, it issued a statement, claiming: ‘Our goal is to protect the U.S. from many threats’. The White House had no answer for the appeals. I don’t have it either, so why should I have any further comment What was the FBI director Robert Mueller thinking? What resources have been sent there? At least now we are looking for a portion of them after September 11. We have to hastily re-staff the FBI what are now being drawn into the so-called War on Terror after taking away from other departments the assigned part of the government.

The expulsion of immigrants from the US has always been a polarizing issue, but Trump's approach has undoubtedly made the divide wider. As Dick Durbin, the Senate's second ranking Democrat, pointed out, the crackdown is “wasteful, misguided.” He further elaborated to Reuters that the increase in the deportation efforts was “making America less safe” because it diverts agents and officials from combating corporate fraud, terrorism, child sexual exploitation, and other crimes.

During an interview with Reuters, US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was adamant that ongoing changes within federal law enforcement were not hampering other criminal investigations. He argued immigration policies should not hinder enforcement of serious violent crimes. "I completely reject the idea that because we’re prioritizing immigration that we are not simultaneously full-force going after violent crime," he said.

He justified the enforcement in the context of the immigration policy, stating that, ""President Trump views what has happened over the last couple years truly as an invasion, so that’s how we’re trying to remedy that."”

On his very first day back in office, January 20, Trump issued an executive order mandating the coordination of federal departments and agencies for what he termed "an invasion" of illegal aliens. He characterized the estimated eleven million undocumented immigrants in the USA as a prime source of crime, drug trafficking, and gang violence, which is not corroborated by government data, and claimed these immigrants are wasting taxpayer money while robbing American citizens of jobs.

Soon thereafter, the Federal law enforcement had started tweeting and posting pictures of the enforcement actions in which they showed agents in body armor and jackets bearing the names of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or ATF, which they wore during raids on immigrants with questionable legal status.

Prior to this year, immigration enforcement rested with the Department of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and has never actively engaged the ATF. The ATF merely dealt with firearm related issues, bomb threats, arson, and illegal tobacco and alcohol trafficking. Schlaer said that after Trump was inaugurated, the ATF was told shift resources to assist with immigration enforcement. Now, it is estimated that 80% of the ATF’s 2,500 agents have been placed in immigration enforcement roles.

One of the officers, using “fugitive hunter” as a euphemism, said the agents were largely being employed to hunt down illegal immigrants. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has also changed its focus recently. With 10,000 employees leading the nation in fighting drug syndicates, a quarter of that personnel is now involved in immigration enforcement rest of the time says one ex-official who was privy to the latest DEA information from its directors. Describing the shift in focus, two other officials said it is “substantial,” but the exact amount of immigration work done by the Drugs and Enforcement Administration cannot be specified.

Most of the newly assigned federal officials have not received adequate immigration law training, as the sources claim. For example, the State Department has over 2,500 Security Service agents whose primary duty is to protect diplomats alongside stopping passport and visa fraud. A DHS Memorandum from February 18th describes, “They have been authorized to assist with ‘investigating, determining the location of, and apprehending, any alien’ unlawfully in the United States.” Secretary Noem sent this memo to the Secretary of State.

The ATF, alongside the State Department, claimed in a Statement that they are assisting with immigration issues but did not give further details on the shifts in personnel.

The changes were made in coincidence with incredible immigration policies which have led to dozens of claims alleging that Trump’s presidency has gone beyond his constitutional limits, and other legal boundaries which include the deportation of suspected members of a Venezuelan gangized under an 18th-century wartime powers act, alongside the detention of the pro-Palestinian protest Columbia Student who is legally a permanent resident.

So far, the results are mixed: With February’s migrant attempts to cross the southern U.S border being the lowest in decades, the number of people detained due to immigration violations has skyrocketed. This increase has not yet resulted in any increased deportations, but experts believe that number will surge in the coming months. “STOP AND FRISK”. More than twenty sources who spoke to Reuters immigration policy directs immense focus on one issue, which consumes crucial resources that could’ve been spent on other crime fighting departments. Until January, there were only two agencies actively removing undocumented immigrants from the country: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection, who together have a workforce of 80,000. Other departments did not dedicate much effort towards deportations. That is changing. According to Matthew Allen, who once was a senior HSI official, now leads the association of Customs and HSI Special agents which has 1000 members. He goes on to say, that in the rank of the governing body of HSD there are many hundreds of agents who covertly specialize in child sexual exploitation, which has been switched to immigration control.

In the past two years, these HSI agents have assisted over 3,000 child victims, often following multi-faceted investigations, as per DHS reports. Allen commented, "There is a strong case that some of these adjustments will, in fact, cause some child victims to continue to be sexually abused.”

While HSI is under the jurisdiction of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division within HSI with 7,100 special agents does not deal with day to day immigration affairs. These specialists deal with issues such as national security, terrorism, drug and human trafficking, arms smuggling, financial crimes, and child pornography and even include immigration crime as a component of their work. Another branch of ICE Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations deals with immigration.

However, on January 31st, staff at HSI received an email from a senior person in the unit who had a different instruction, which was “to fight off the invasion of America.”

HSI recently started providing training to employees who have no prior experience with immigration enforcement. This comprises how to “knock and talk” which is essentially provoking immigrants to exit their homes for interrogation, perform stop and frisks, or even arrest people without a warrant, based on previously internal documents that have been leaked to Reuters.

According to an employee and accompanying images of the procedures shared with Reuters, HSI’s latest efforts also comprise verifying whether businesses have employed illegal immigrants, stalking outside the houses of immigrant employees, taking pictures of their license plates, and even screenshoting images of intended immigrants to arrest.

The last time immigration operations were reported on, immigration operations were still directed towards HSI, where everything turned into a tax and crime investigation instead of just a financial one, being reported by Reuters news.

As part of undercover operations, they are normally “out there following the complex money trails from drug deals, or making people pay the taxes they owe,” tells a senior scholar from an American think piece, who deals with tax as EUA’s Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, Elaine Maag. “Evidence is mounting of the costs and direct and indirect consequences of withdrawing the IRS criminal investigators from action.”

No comment was provided by the IRS.

PILING UP PROSECUTION WORK

Emil Bove, a high-ranking Justice Department official, informed federal prosecutors on Trump's second day in office through a memo that they were to “take all steps necessary” to charge illegal immigrants with crimes in the U.S. during the Trump administration.  

While the memo stated, Bove ordered the office to increase the immigration prosecutions, he also noted that any declined prosecution requests must be reported to the Justice Department without delay.  

As a consequence, numerous immigration-related prosecutions have been received by the already overwhelmed federal prosecutors, which typically manage an assortment of offenses, according to two sources.  

According to a report by Reuters, in the federal court of San Diego, immigration crimes charged in February increased four times in comparison to the past year. Over this duration, the amount of drug felony prosecutions recorded experienced a slight decrease.  

The immigration prosecution rate previously considered low has increased in the Detroit region, as the number of recorded immigration prosecution requests has increased from two in February 2024 to nineteen lately.

It is documented that less than 1% of the cases from the DEA and ATF over the past decade had any relation to immigration violations in the case management records from the Justice Department. However, starting January, DEA agents were told to focus on previously closed cases of up to five years which the prosecuting lawyers refused to take due to the lack of sufficient evidence to warrant charges. Two people who were part of the process claimed it was now possible to charge illegal immigrants. If immigration officials ascertain that the individual was unlawfully present in the country at the time of the arrest, then law enforcement personnel can be deployed to detain them. As economists and political leaders such as Donald Trump and Elon Musk seek to reduce the expenses of running the government, there seems to be little change regarding immigration personnel. ICE employees were told through an internal communication that some 2.3 million federal employees are being offered retirement buyouts which allow them to voluntarily walk away from their job without penalty.

 


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