White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has reportedly masterminded a shift in the Trump administration’s involvement and influence on criminal investigations into organized crime.
ProPublica reports that Miller has increased the White House’s ability to direct investigations against suspected drug traffickers and transnational criminal groups under the new Homeland Security Task Forces, which will be led by the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI.
The task force would essentially subsume the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) abilities as the new lead agency for narcotics enforcement while also scaling back the power prosecutors hold over investigations.
In short, legal experts say the task force could open the door for the Trump administration to disregard legal norms in favor of its own interests.
“You won’t have neutral prosecutors weighing the facts and making decisions about who to investigate,” Adam W. Cohen, a career Justice Department attorney who was fired in March, warned ProPublica. “The White House will be able to decide.”
Under the task force’s influence on such criminal investigations, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), under Kristi Noem, could also push agencies to purse more immigration-related crimes as it continues to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
ProPublica reported that the task force was created under President Trump’s Inauguration Day executive order, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” targeting illegal immigration.
As the order states, the task force will seek “to end the presence of criminal cartels, foreign gangs and transnational criminal organizations throughout the United States” and “end the scourge of human smuggling and trafficking, with a particular focus on such offenses involving children.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
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