Nearly half of FBI agents in major offices reassigned to immigration enforcement
Nearly half of the FBI agents working in major U.S. field offices have been reassigned to assist with immigration enforcement, according to newly released figures, a stunning shift in law enforcement focus that raises public safety concerns.
Personnel data obtained by Democratic Senator Mark Warner and shared with the Guardian show that the Trump administration has mobilized 45% of FBI agents in the country’s 25 largest field offices to support the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration crackdown. Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that across all FBI offices, 23% of the agency’s approximately 13,000 agents are currently working on immigration issues.
Warner’s office said FBI agents currently deployed with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents are no longer responsible for combating cybercrime, drug trafficking, terrorism, espionage, violent crime, counterintelligence and other areas that are part of the agency’s mission – areas that Trump has claimed are priorities for the White House.
The data, first reported by The Washington Post, suggests the FBI is dramatically changing its goals in support of Trump’s increasingly aggressive immigration raids, with the administration targeting 3,000 arrests per day and seeking to expand detention capacity to detain more than 100,000 immigrants.
Warner said the data underestimates the scale of the reorganization because the FBI only provides data on agents who currently spend more than half their work time on immigration enforcement. The senator’s office said more than a quarter of FBI agents’ total time may now be devoted to immigration work, while in some field offices more than half of the agents have been transferred to the Department of Homeland Security.
“When a quarter of the FBI’s top agents withdraw from the front lines fighting terrorists, spies, drug traffickers and violent criminals, the consequences are clear: critical national security work is put on hold and our country faces greater risk,” Warner said in a statement.
Experts say the FBI’s transformation raises concerns about the potential consequences of immigration raids targeting communities and the impact on the work the FBI is abandoning.
Mike German, a former FBI agent and civil liberties advocate, said it was unprecedented for the FBI to redeploy so many agents to assignments that were outside the FBI’s purview. He said some agents may be eager to support the president’s immigration agenda, while others may resist the reorientation: “Part of the reason why FBI leadership is doing this on such a large scale is to separate the two — to determine who is a loyalist and who is a potential obstacle to the government’s goals.”
German said the move was consistent with FBI Director Kash Patel’s efforts to purge FBI agents seen as disloyal to Trump, pointing to reports that people involved in the Jan. 6 investigation were fired.
He said FBI agents are typically trained as investigators and may make targeted arrests, a job that is significantly different from that of many immigration enforcement officers, which can cause problems on the ground during immigration raids. “Jumping in an SUV with a group of armed men and rolling around the streets until you see someone running away is a much more dangerous activity in itself, and they’re not very well trained,” Germaine said.
The former agent said there is ample evidence of the violent and indiscriminate nature of the ice raids, which are often carried out by masked men and sometimes result in the detention of U.S. citizens, and that the addition of FBI personnel could heighten chaos and the potential for abuse.
The specific tasks and responsibilities of the FBI agents currently working with Ace are unclear. Spokespersons for Homeland Security, ICE, the FBI and the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.
German, the FBI whistleblower who has spoken out about civil rights abuses in the bureau’s intelligence work, said his biggest concern is that the agency is no longer focused on public corruption and white-collar crime and that state and local agencies are ill-equipped to address them: “That’s where the real harm is.”
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Current and former FBI agents told The Washington Post there are growing concerns that morale within the agency is low and agents are stretched thin, which could hamper national security investigations and complex cases.
Kenneth Gray, a former FBI agent and professor of practice in the criminal justice department at the University of New Haven, said the shift in priorities is similar to the FBI’s reorganization after 9/11, when counterterrorism took center stage.
“The bureau can afford temporary changes in its priorities, but in the long run if agents continue to work on immigration matters instead of counterterrorism, foreign counterintelligence or cybercrime, it could end up costing us a lot,” said Gray, who left the bureau in 2012 after 24 years. “If agents working on counterterrorism are diverted, the next 9/11 could happen.”
Gray, however, said he is not concerned about the temporary shift while the Department of Homeland Security rapidly recruits new ice police officers.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi defended redirecting FBI resources toward immigration enforcement during a tense Senate hearing earlier this week as she was accused by Democrats of weaponizing the Justice Department. She said FBI agents are working every day with the Department of Homeland Security to “keep Americans safe and remove illegal aliens from our country.”
