Trump Confesses Migrants Aren’t the Criminals He Claimed They Are

There’s a story that largely faded into the non-stop stream of stories about corrupt things DOJ is doing under Pam Bondi (or, as this NYT profile of Bondi admits, Stephen Miller’s watch). Reuters first reported it, but NBC’s story is more comprehensive.

The FBI has ordered field offices to shift a significant number — almost half, in some offices — of agents from hunting crime to hunting migrants.

FBI field offices around the country have been ordered to assign significantly more agents to immigration enforcement, a dramatic shift in federal law enforcement priorities that will likely siphon resources away from counterterrorism, counterintelligence and fraud investigations, multiple current and former bureau officials told NBC News.

[snip]

The shift in resources spans the country, according to two FBI officials. In a major change, 45% of all agents in the 25 largest FBI field offices will be working on immigration full time.

The bureau’s Atlanta field office will assign 67 agents to work on immigration “enforcement and removal operations” full time, seven days a week, the officials said. That is around half of all the agents assigned to the Atlanta field office headquarters

In Los Angeles, the field office is creating nine squads to address enforcement and removal operations full time. They will pursue noncitizens who have overstayed their visas, even if they have no criminal history.

And the FBI’s Boston field office was ordered to assign an additional 33 special agents to immigration enforcement.

[snip]

Given that FBI resources are finite, current and former officials say, a significant increase in immigration enforcement will draw agents away from what have long been top FBI priorities, including counterterrorism, counterespionage, fraud and violent crime. [my emphasis]

The story appeared amid a parallel story that DHS has asked DOD for 20,000 National Guard members to deploy to American neighborhoods.

Regarding the FBI shift, NBC focuses on how this will require the FBI to pull agents from investigating crimes, including terrorism and violent crime: the opportunity cost of doing this, and implicitly, the likelihood that FBI will miss terrorists or spies.

But consider what this says. FBI says they aren’t finding enough migrants to deport by looking for criminals, even by looking for the kinds of crimes that Trump and Stephen Miller have been claiming, for years, migrants commit.

FBI is not finding migrants by looking for terrorists.

FBI is not finding migrants by looking for rapists.

FBI is not finding migrants by looking for murderers.

As a POGO column yesterday noted, CBP is also not finding drug dealers when finding migrants.

Of the over 5.8 million migrants stopped by Border Patrol between fiscal years 2022 and 2024, drugs were seized from only 249 people, CBP migrant encounter data showed.

Marijuana accounted for more than half of those 249 drug seizures; just 1 in 53,965 migrants were caught with drugs other than marijuana. To put that into perspective, the odds of dying from a bee sting are 1 in 41,076.

You can’t find migrants by looking for criminals.

And so you have to move FBI agents from looking for criminals and make them search for migrants another way, for migrants as migrants, rather than for criminals.

By demanding that the FBI take agents who are currently looking for criminals and instead assign them to look for migrants, Donald Trump and Stephen Miller are confessing that migrants aren’t the criminals that Trump’s entire political career has been built on claiming they are.