Democrats question diversion of federal law enforcement officers to Trump migrant crackdown

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee raised concerns on Tuesday about law enforcement agents from agencies like the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives being diverted from their regular duties to help President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“This all-consuming focus on rounding up immigrants is not an efficient use of the Department’s resources,” Reps. Jamie Ruskin, (D-Maryland), Pramila Jayapal (D-California) and Lucy McBath (D-Georgia) said in a letter to the Justice Department on Tuesday,. 

 “We hired and trained these law-enforcement officials to handle extremely important and sensitive tasks essential to the safety insecurity of our nation,” said the letter to Acting Attorney General James McHenry. “Forcing these officials to abandon the responsibilities for which they were hired will allow dangerous, criminals to remain free and expose, countless Americans to more violent crime.”

The Democratic members of Congress also raised concerns about a memo from Acting Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bove, diverting members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force away from terror investigations and prioritizing the arrest of undocumented immigrants “with no attempt to strategically prioritize public safety threats.”

Since Bove’s Jan. 21 memo, agents from the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies overseen by the Justice Department have accompanied ICE agents on “enhanced” operations, like those seen in Chicago and New York City last week.

The letter also asked the Justice Department to provide information on how many agents from the various federal law enforcement agencies have been diverted to work on immigration arrests. The Democrats asked for the name of each employee, the years the employee has worked for the Department and how the person’s agency has been affected by their reassignment.