The Trump administration is directing more F.B.I., drug and gun agents toward immigration enforcement as it ramps up a crackdown across more than two dozen U.S. cities in the coming days, according to five people familiar with the directive.
Justice Department officials have decided that about 2,000 of their federal agents — from the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the U.S. Marshals Service — will be enlisted to help the Department of Homeland Security find and arrest undocumented immigrants for the remainder of the year, these people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the effort, which has yet to be announced.
The effort would signal a sharp escalation in the administration’s effort to enact a crucial element of President Trump’s agenda and would be a noticeable shift in the typical work of the Justice Department, particularly the F.B.I. Diverting Justice Department resources to focus solely on immigration also raises questions about whether such a shift would affect other priorities, like investigating financial crimes or corruption.
Already, federal agents in the Justice Department have been assisting immigration agents in American cities.
The new effort would significantly expand on that work, adding more personnel, the people said. Law enforcement officials have been told that in every city subject to the new decree, F.B.I. agents should account for 45 percent of the Justice Department contingent, they said.
The proposal comes as the Trump administration has dialed back numerous types of white collar crime investigations, including foreign corruption, adherence to anti-money-laundering rules in the cryptocurrency industry and illicit foreign lobbying of U.S. officials.
The plan would affect 25 U.S. cities and their suburbs. For example, in the New York City area, 193 federal agents from Justice Department agencies would be assigned to work on immigration cases, and 86 of those would be F.B.I. agents, the people said.
New York is the F.B.I.’s largest field office, with nearly 1,000 agents when fully staffed. But current and former officials said siphoning roughly 8 percent of the work force to handle immigration cases would disrupt other bureau investigations and potentially affect white collar cases.
That percentage would be even higher in Los Angeles, which has a smaller number of F.B.I. agents, and where the administration proposed assigning 207 Justice Department agents to immigration work for the rest of the year.
“This Department of Justice will continue to support immigration enforcement operations,” a department spokesman said.
The directive envisions an F.B.I. that plays an increasing role in the Trump administration’s deportation efforts. The F.B.I. has already been assigned other tasks related to immigration enforcement, including investigating the whereabouts and conditions of immigrant children.
F.B.I. managers have been asked to establish plans for meeting the Justice Department goals, and delivering answers this week, the people said. The immigration work by agents is expected to run seven days a week.
Immigration enforcement has long been the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, where Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents conduct such work. But in Mr. Trump’s second term, the White House has marshaled other law enforcement agencies toward those efforts.
Federal agents from across the government have been deployed to assist ICE operations. In most circumstances, the federal agents act as “force multipliers,” securing the scene for immigration enforcement officers targeting undocumented immigrants. Immigration arrests in communities require extensive resources, and ICE has a limited number of officers.
Mr. Trump has requested more resources toward enforcement. On Friday, he called for D.H.S. to receive 20,000 more officers to aid in its crackdown.
Separately, a Justice Department memo issued Monday laid out the administration’s priorities for pursuing fraud and other types of white collar crime. The memo echoes an earlier directive about cryptocurrency-related investigations but offers one significant new addition, suggesting that prosecutors should shut down such cases quickly if they are not producing good evidence.
In order to “maximize efficiency” in white collar investigations, wrote Matthew Galeotti, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, “prosecutors must move expeditiously to investigate cases and make charging decisions.”
“That means,” he added, “that my office will work closely with the relevant sections to track investigations and ensure that they do not linger and are swiftly concluded.”
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
Adam Goldman writes about the F.B.I. and national security. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
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