Three House members said the shift will allow “dangerous criminals” to remain free and expose “countless Americans to more violent crime.”
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee raised concerns Tuesday that law enforcement agents from agencies like the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are being diverted from their regular duties to help President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“This all-consuming focus on rounding up immigrants is not an efficient use of the Department’s resources,” Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Lucy McBath, D-Ga., 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 and security 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 terrorism investigations and prioritizing the arrests 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 in Chicago and New York City last week.
The letter also asked the Justice Department to provide information about how many agents from the various federal law enforcement agencies have been diverted to work on immigration arrests. The Democrats asked for the names of each employee, the years the employees have worked for the department and how the employees’ agencies have been affected by their reassignments.
