The Trump administration has abandoned efforts to combat child exploitation, human trafficking and cartels as it diverts thousands of law enforcement personnel to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Democratic senators said in a letter to the White House.
Ruben Gallego of Arizona, along with 28 other Democratic senators and one independent, wrote to the president, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) on Monday demanding that federal officials provide a “full accounting” of officers who have been redirected to immigration enforcement and a list of all investigations affected by the reassignments.
The letter, first shared with the Guardian, follows a series of reports suggesting that the president’s push to dramatically expand its force of immigration officers has hampered a wide range of law-enforcement priorities. The senators cited an ICE document from August 2025, published by the Cato Institute thinktank, which said more than 28,000 personnel from federal law-enforcement agencies had been diverted from their regular duties to work for ICE’s enforcement and removal operations, which conducts raids and arrests undocumented people.
The letter referenced a New York Times investigation in November finding the intense focus on deportations has taken resources away from investigations into sexual crimes against children, an inquiry into a hidden market that finances terrorism, and federal efforts to combat human smuggling and sex trafficking.
“You have pulled agents away from some of the federal government’s most critical criminal investigations, weakening the very work that ensures public safety. In a world in which we must prioritize the use of limited resources, an agent arresting primarily non-violent immigrants necessarily means one less agent available to catch child predators and drug traffickers,” said the letter, which was signed by a majority of Democratic senators.
“This diversion represents a deliberate choice: a stunning abdication of the basic responsibilities of the executive branch to the American people, and a direct threat to the security of communities across the country.”
The reassignments come as ICE has engaged in a massive recruitment push, with the agency announcing on Saturday that it had hired more than 12,000 new officers and employees over the last year.
The number of people in ICE custody hit an all-time high in December, with more than 68,400 people in detention, the Guardian reported. Immigrants with no criminal record now make up the largest group in ICE detention, contradicting the administration’s repeated assertions that it is focusing on deporting the “worst of the worst”.
The senators’ letter, sent to Trump, DHS secretary Kristi Noem and US attorney general Pam Bondi, said the administration’s reassignments were designed to “fuel a politically motivated deportation agenda that bears little relationship to actual security or safety priorities”.
Affected agencies, the senators said, include the FBI; the Marshals Service; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); the Department of Defense; the Internal Revenue Service; the Secret Service; and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Agents have been pulled off complex cases, including investigations into cyber-attacks, domestic extremism, drug trafficking and sanctions evasion, the letter said. The senators said the impacts have been “especially devastating” at Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a DHS branch charged with combating child exploitation and a range of criminal organizations, including cartels.
Entire HSI units have reportedly been reassigned to immigration enforcement, the letter continued. The senators cited accounts from engineers at major tech companies who have reported a “noticeable drop in follow-up from federal officials” when they report child safety issues.
Efforts to combat gun violence have also been “eviscerated” as 80% of ATF special agents have been redirected to immigration, the letter said, citing a November CNN report. And nearly half of FBI agents working in the US’s major field offices have been reassigned to aid immigration enforcement, according to data released by Senator Mark Warner in October.
The Democrats demanded the administration respond by 19 January by disclosing threat assessments that informed the reassignments, all communications directing agencies to provide personnel for ICE, and any internal objections raised by leadership and investigators.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, criticized the letter in an email to the Guardian, accusing Gallego of “pander[ing] to a radical left base ahead of his doomed-to-fail presidential run”.
“The characterization of HSI’s enforcement posture is selective, incomplete, and badly out of step with the actual data. FY25 was the highest year on record for HSI criminal enforcement, with more than 46,000 criminal arrests made – the most in the agency’s history,” Jackson wrote.
FY25 refers to the fiscal year from October 2024 through September 2025, which includes roughly four months of the Biden administration. The New York Times reporting on the HSI data found that as agents dramatically increased civil immigration arrests, narcotics arrests fell by roughly 11%, agents opened 15% fewer new investigations into narcotics crimes and the number of weapons seized declined by 73%.
Jackson declined to provide specifics on the 46,000 arrests or comment on the declines in drug arrests and gun seizures, accusing the New York Times of “cherry-picking data to advance their preferred narrative when the facts tell a much different story”.
She said Trump was keeping his promises on deportations, adding: “Any insinuation that the Trump administration isn’t successfully combating dangerous crime is false and uninformed. With narcotic seizures and human smuggling arrests up significantly, paired with a historically secure border, the Trump administration is making America safer than ever before.”
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said in an email on late Tuesday after publication that Democratic senators were “ignorant of any basic understanding of how [DHS] functions”, arguing crimes such as human trafficking and terrorism have a “nexus to illegal immigration”. The spokesperson said human smuggling arrests have increased under Trump, HSI has seized more narcotics compared with the Biden administration in 2024, and that DHS was “prioritizing the worst of the worst” and undocumented people with “final removal orders”.
As of December, however, data shows that nearly 24,000 people in ICE custody do not have criminal records, compared with nearly 17,000 people who do have records.
“We are removing violent criminals and national security threats to make America safe again,” the spokesperson said.
The FBI declined to comment. The justice department and ATF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
