Federal agents who usually hunt down child abusers are cracking down on immigrants who live in the U.S. illegally. Homeland Security investigators who specialize in money laundering are raiding restaurants and small businesses looking for immigrants who aren’t authorized to work. Agents who pursue drug traffickers and tax fraud are being reassigned to enforce immigration law. As President Trump pledges to deport “millions and millions” of “criminal aliens,” thousands of federal law enforcement officials are being enlisted to take on new work as immigration enforcers, pulling crime-fighting resources away on other areas -- from drug trafficking and terrorism to sexual abuse and fraud, Reuters reports Reuters' account of Trump’s push to reorganize federal law enforcement is based on interviews with more than 20 current and former federal agents, attorneys and other officials.
"I do not recall ever seeing this wide a spectrum of federal government resources all being turned toward immigration enforcement," said Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former Homeland Security official in Republican and Democratic administrations. "When you're telling agencies to stop what you've been doing and do this now, whatever else they were doing takes a back seat." The Trump administration has offered no accounting of the revamp. It echoes the aftermath of the 2001 attacks, when Congress created the Department of Homeland Security that pulled together 169,000 employees from other agencies and refocused the FBI on battling terrorism. The Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, called the crackdown a “wasteful, misguided diversion of resources” that is “making America less safe" by drawing agents and away from fighting corporate fraud, terrorism, child sexual exploitation and other crimes. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, said, “I completely reject the idea that because we’re prioritizing immigration that we are not simultaneously full-force going after violent crime.” He said the crackdown was warranted. “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.” The focus on immigration is drawing significant resources away from crime-fighting departments, said 20 sources.
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