White House pressure for increased immigration arrests strains law enforcement agencies

The Trump administration is building up federal manpower and resources to meet the White House’s desire to triple the number of daily immigration arrests – signaling a renewed push to go well beyond efforts from previous administrations.

The Trump administration is building up federal manpower and resources to meet the White House’s desire to triple the number of daily immigration arrests – signaling a renewed push to go well beyond efforts from previous administrations. The White House is putting intense pressure on law enforcement agencies across the government to meet a goal of a million deportations a year. That’s led to a surge of agents and officers across the federal government focusing their attention on arrests and deportation efforts – and in some cases straining resources. At the FBI, hundreds of agents have been reassigned to immigration-related duties, raising concerns among agents that the shift could hinder important national security investigations, including into terror threats and espionage by China and Russia, according to people familiar with the matter. Top FBI officials have provided little guidance to field offices on how agents are expected to increase immigration arrest numbers while also working their top priority cases, the sources said. FBI agents have been told by supervisors not to document moving resources away from high-priority cases toward immigration-related work, according to one person familiar with the matter. FBI agents typically log hours toward specific threats or assignments, but officials appear to be trying to avoid creating a paper trail that would show that the FBI is pulling resources away from national security threats to immigration, the source said. As a result, some field offices are declining to take on new investigations of certain threats.