WASHINGTON – The Department of Homeland Security has ordered its entire investigations division – composed of 6,000 agents – to divert focus on drug dealers, terrorists, and human traffickers and shift priority to the Trump administration’s mission of deporting people in the U.S. illegally, USA TODAY has learned.
The new focus for DHS’s Homeland Security Investigations agency (HSI), 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 investigations into some of the most dangerous transnational threats Americans face, including Mexican drug cartels smuggling deadly fentanyl across the border from Mexico.
“A lot of my colleagues were afraid this was going to happen,” after Trump won election on a hardline immigration platform, said Chris Cappannelli, a former HSI supervisory agent. “This is going to be a total train wreck.”
“Some of my friends short of mandatory retirement yet eligible are rushing to get their retirement paperwork in,” Cappannelli told USA TODAY. “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 protecting America 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 Jan. 25 to deploy federal and state agents from across the government in the hunt for people in the country illegally. Last week, she asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to detail IRS agents who normally investigate tax fraud and money laundering to help “secure the southern border and enforce immigration laws.”
Kenneth MacDonald, another former HSI supervisory agent and a former White House official, said other critical threats could go uninvestigated by HSI, which he described as the second largest U.S. federal investigative law enforcement agency after the FBI. Those include child exploitation crimes, cyberattacks and Dark Web financial schemes, Iranian and Chinese nuclear traffickers, Russian organized 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 investigations 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.