Trump plan shifts DHS agents' focus
Division to work on deportation instead of terrorism, other crimes
By: Josh Meyer
USA Today
WASHINGTON - The Department of Homeland Security has ordered its entire investigations division - composed of 6,000 agents - to divert focus from drug dealers, terrorist and human traffickers, shifting priority to the Trump administration's mission of deporting people in the U.S. illegally.
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The new focus for the department's Homeland Security Investigations agency, current and former officials say, is in keeping with recent executive orders signed by President Donald Trump that demand a wholesale shift in federal law enforcement resources toward immigration crackdowns and removal.
.... But they warn the shift will undermine high-profile investigation into sum of the most dangerous transnational threats American face, including Mexico drug cartels smuggling deadly fentanyl aromatics the border from Mexico.
..... "A lot of my colleagues were afraid this was going to happen" after trump won election on a hard-line immigration platform, said Chris Cappannelli, a former HSI supervisory agent. "This is going to be a total train wreck.
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"Some of my friends short of mandatory retirement yet eligible are rushing to get their retirement paperwork in. Others are looking for other law enforcement jobs outside of DHS where they won't have to be chasing migrants. This isn't what they signed up for - or the best use of their skills and experience."
..... Asked about the shift, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin would only say that all DHS agents, including those at HSI, are now fulfilling the department's "primary mission of protection medicare through the arrest and removal of illegal aliens who pose a threat to national security, public safety and the integrity of our nation's immigration laws."
.... Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has moved quickly since being sworn in January 25 [2025] to deploy federal and state agent form across the government in the hunt for people in the country illegally. Last week [02/12/2025] she asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to detail IRS agents who normally investigate tax fraud and money laundering to help "secure the southern borderer and enforce immigration laws."
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Kenneth MacDonald, another former HSI supervisory agent and a former White House official, said other critical threats could of uninvestigated by HSI, which he described as the second largest U.S. federal investigative law enforcement agency after the FBI. those including child exploitation crimes, cyberattacks and dark web financial schemes, Iranian and Chinese nuclear traffickers, Russian organize crime, trade fraud and sanctions investigations.
..... "Anything that crosses the border, both electronically and digitally or physically, those things are within the purview of HSI. It's something like 400 statutes that we're responsible for enforcing," MacDonald said.
..... The directive could also threaten ongoing investigation and prosecutions, many of which are multi-agency efforts that have been years in the making - like several ongoing cases against the Sinaloa Cartel and other Mexican and Chinese transnational crime syndicates, current and former officials said.
..... "I know there's a lot of concern," MacDonald said.
..... "No one has a problem if this is short term. But if this is the foreseeable future, internally there are going to be lots of problems."
..... Technically, the Homeland Security Investigation, division has always resided within Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of the man agencies within the sprawling Department of Homeland Security that was established soon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to better protect Americans from domestic and foreign threats.
..... But HSI has fought for years for independence from ICE, saying its almost singular focus on what's known as Enforcement and Removal Operations has sharply undercut its ability to investigate crimes that have little or no connection to immigration - including transnational criminal networks in the United States and around the world.
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Cappannelli, who retied in 2022, and MacDonald, who retired in 2013, said HSI's association with ICE, including suing ICE email accounts, letterhead and even raid jacket insignia, hamstrung their efforts to cultivate sources and informants.
..... Trump's promise to deport millions of immigrates during his first presidency had made HSI's association with ICE exponentially worse, they said. especially in its efforts to fight drug cartels and conduct major investigations in the country's biggest cities.
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Many HSI officials wrote a pretext letter in 2018, asking then-Homeland Security secretary Kristjen Nielsen to brake up ICE because other jurisdictions were agreeing to partner with HSI only if "the ICE" nae is excluded from any public facing information," The Washington Post reported at the time.
..... Then, in December 2021, senior HSI agents sent an internal report to President Joe Biden's DHS secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, urging him to let them become a standalone agency divorced from ICE.
..... They cited 77 instances in which HSI's affiliation with ICE, "had hurt relations with state and local law enforcement, college and universities, and community groups, making it difficult to recruit new agents and build trusts with victims of crime," The Post reported.
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Last April, [2024] HSI announced a crucial viceroy in that effort, gaining its own website scrubbed of any links to ICE. They also got new email adverses and raid jackets for agents in 2220 cities in the U.S. and 80 locations overseas, and even a team of publicists and other officials to help with their "rebranding," the senior federal law enforcement officials said.
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HSI's new "independent branding: would allow its agents "to work without the undue toxicity that in some places come with the ICE moniker," Patrick Lechleitner, ICE's acting director at ht time, told The Washington Post.
..... "They'll still be part of ICE, just like the marines are part of the department of the Navy," Lechleitner said then.
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In rent weeks, thought, the HSI agents have been told they are now migrating back to the old system, in which they and the enforcement and removal agents are all focusing on deportations.