The Department of Homeland Security asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to deputize law-enforcement workers, including IRS criminal investigators, to assist in immigration enforcement. In a Feb. 7 memo, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem requested Bessent provide agents who would help investigate financial flows involving human-trafficking networks and businesses that employ illegal immigrants. The agents could help arrest, detain and transport people, reports the Wall Street Journal. The request by Noem is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to deputize law-enforcement officials at various agencies to help carry out deportations. A previous memo granted immigration-enforcement authority to agencies at the Justice Department, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Marshals Service.
The Internal Revenue Service’s criminal-investigation division has 2,290 agents, up 10% since 2022. The tax agency has been adding enforcement staff, including criminal investigators, since the then-Democratic-controlled Congress voted in 2022 to give the IRS more resources. President Trump and Republicans opposed that expansion, and the president has made remarks about diverting IRS employees to the border. Trump has promisedthe largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been trying to increase arrests in recent weeks. IRS criminal investigators are law-enforcement officers who can make arrests, and they often carry firearms, just like other federal agents. They are different from the IRS’s revenue agents and revenue officers, the tax agency’s name for auditors and collections workers.
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