Amid President Trump’s immigration crackdown, special agents at the Homeland Security Department have made fewer arrests for drug crimes and seized fewer weapons than they did the previous fiscal year, according to internal government documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The numbers reflect a shift in priorities as top officials at the department pulled special agents off drug, gun and other complex criminal investigations under pressure from the White House to deport more undocumented immigrants, current and former federal officials told The Times.
The impact was clear, with immigration arrests soaring. The number of people arrested by homeland security special agents for civil immigration offenses went from roughly 5,000 to a record of more than 94,500, the data shows.
Among the key figures in the documents:
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Narcotics arrests fell by roughly 11 percent.
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Agents opened 15 percent fewer new investigations into narcotics crimes.
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The number of weapons seized fell dramatically, declining from nearly 41,400 to fewer than 11,200 — a 73 percent drop.
The data comes from an internal report by Homeland Security Investigations, the agency’s crime-fighting arm. The report offers a comparison of enforcement statistics between Oct. 1, 2024, and Sept. 30, 2025, and the same period during the previous year. That time frame includes roughly four months of the Biden administration and eight months of the Trump administration.
Overall, the report shows that criminal arrests went up to more than 46,000, a 41 percent rise. The increase was driven in part by several types of investigations often related to immigration, such as human smuggling and trafficking. But roughly 12,000 of the arrests were not categorized by crime type, making it difficult to assess the kinds of cases that accounted for the reported rise.
The Times reported last week that H.S.I.’s investigations into major crimes, including child exploitation and terrorism financing, had faltered after special agents were ordered to assist with the immigration crackdown. Dozens of officials who have worked under the current Trump administration said the shifts had hindered their case work.
The newly disclosed data reveals the extent of the change under H.S.I., which is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement but generally focuses on criminal investigations involving threats like financial fraud, drug smuggling and sex trafficking, not civil immigration violations. Another component of ICE, called Enforcement and Removal Operations, has typically handled immigration enforcement.
The numbers were circulated in recent days within H.S.I. but have not been released publicly. No data is included for the fiscal years before 2024, which is also not publicly available in similar detail.
In a message to H.S.I. employees that accompanied the report, the agency’s acting leader, John A. Condon, highlighted the civil immigration arrests, calling them a “monumental achievement that underscores your operational impact and commitment to mission.” Those arrests are counted separately from criminal ones.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, characterized the data as a sign of success, saying that H.S.I. had made more criminal arrests than in any previous fiscal year.
Ms. Jackson also said The Times was “cherry-picking” statistics from the report and dismissed the decline in individual categories such as drug arrests and weapon seizures, saying those could fluctuate from year to year. She did not provide statistics for previous years and did not explain what kinds of arrests accounted for most of the overall increase.
“The Trump administration is making America safer than ever before,” she said.
Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said The Times was “peddling a false narrative.” She said the report showed that agents had seized more narcotics than the previous year. But the comparison was not clear because the new figure includes some types of substances that were not part of the previous year’s total. Officials did not answer questions about the discrepancy.
Several other statistics suggest that H.S.I. is pursuing cases that are making less impact. For instance, while the agency made significantly more criminal arrests this year, the number of people indicted stayed roughly flat. Agents also opened many fewer “significant cases” — such as those into global crime syndicates like drug cartels — than they had the previous year, according to the data. And despite the jump in human trafficking arrests, agents reported assisting 20 percent fewer victims.
“When you focus the agency on immigration enforcement, you necessarily lose the ability to combat more serious threats,” said John Tobon, a former senior official at H.S.I. “Strategically, you’re diverting resources from long-term investigations combating transnational criminal organizations.”
The agency had less success in combating some other major crimes, too, the data shows.
One of H.S.I.’s priorities is dismantling networks of online criminals who create and distribute images depicting the sexual abuse of children. But the number of indictments for child exploitation crimes fell 28 percent. And H.S.I. agents identified or rescued roughly 300 fewer child victims, a 17 percent drop.
Law enforcement officials familiar with child exploitation investigations said many H.S.I. agents were continuing to work those cases in their personal time.
The decrease in drug arrests and investigations at the Department of Homeland Security comes as administration officials have said they are making the fight against narcotics smuggling a major priority, including with attacks on boats in the Caribbean that have killed dozens of people. The administration has accused the people of smuggling drugs but has not publicly provided evidence backing up those claims.
Other federal agencies that combat drug and weapons smuggling have also devoted resources to the immigration crackdown. The F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have reassigned thousands of agents to help arrest undocumented immigrants, according to documents reviewed by The Times.
Natalie Baldassarre, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said agents and prosecutors were still “acutely focused” on pursuing drug cartels and traffickers.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting. Emily Powell contributed research.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
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