Trump’s Agent Reassignments Threaten White Collar Crime Law Enforcement

TOPSHOT – A person is detained as residents of Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood confront US Border Patrol and other law enforcement agents at a gas station after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents allegedly detained an unidentified man riding in his car, in Chicago, Illinois, on October 4, 2025. US President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to deport large numbers of migrants, has encouraged authorities to be more aggressive as he seeks to hit his widely reported target of one million deportations annually. (Photo by OCTAVIO JONES / AFP) (Photo by OCTAVIO JONES/AFP via Getty Images)

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Recently 9 senators including Elizabeth Warran, Richard Blumental and Cory Booker along with 21 members of Congress sent a letter to the Inspectors General for the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, Postal Service and Office of Tax Administration expressing concern about the Trump Administration’s diversion of law enforcement personnel and resources away from prosecuting white collar crime to focusing on immigration law enforcement. Since January of 2025 the Trump Administration has diverted more than 25,000 law enforcement personnel, many of whom were focused on combatting white collar crime to immigration law enforcement.

This includes:

1. As many as 40% of FBI agents in the largest FBI field offices who have been reassigned from work in public corruption, financial fraud, cybercrime and complex corporate investigations to immigration assignments.
2. More than 1,700 IRS Criminal Investigation Unit employees who were reassigned to ICE as of September 2025 taking them away from their work prosecuting fraud, tax and financial crimes. According to its annual report in 2024 the IRS Criminal Investigation Unit initiated more than 2,667 criminal investigations, obtaining 1,571 convictions representing a 90% conviction rate. It uncovered more than $9.1 billion in fraud from tax and financial crimes, obtained court orders totaling $1.7 billion in restitution to the IRS and seized criminal assets totaling approximately $1.2 billion far exceeding the cost of its budget.
3. Homeland Security Investigations, which led criminal investigations into international money laundering, financial fraud, cyber-enabled financial crimes and intellectual property theft, had 90% of its workforce reassigned to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations.

The letter states “In practice these diversions also undermine deterrence: when white collar criminals believe that federal enforcement units lack the resources or continuity to pursue long-term cases, they may become more emboldened to take risks that endanger markets, taxpayers and public institutions. The safety of American families and the integrity of our financial system depend on restoring law enforcement’s capacity to investigate and prosecute white-collar crime rather than simply turning the federal government into an immigration enforcement machine.”

And while the administration touts its immigration enforcement efforts as being against the “worst of the worst” criminals, the figures do not support this. In the first three months of Trump’s present term in office 21.9% of those arrested had no criminal record and this number has steadily increased with nearly 43% of January’s arrests of people with no criminal record.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has pardoned or commuted sentences for people and companies who owed more than $100 million in fines that would have been paid to the federal government and $1.3 billion in restitution that would have been paid to the victims of the white-collar crimes of the pardoned and commuted criminals.

OFFICES OF INSPECTOR GENERAL

The Offices of Inspector General were created through the Inspector General Act of 1978 as a response to the Watergate scandal. This law established independent watchdogs inside federal agencies to prevent abuse of power and to investigate waste, fraud, abuse, corruption and mismanagement in federal agencies as well as audit these agencies.

In FY2024, the inspectors general generated more than $71 billion in cost-efficiency improvements. But that was under the Biden Administration.

President Trump has taken broad steps to weaken these important offices. Within days of taking office in January of 2025, he illegally fired 17 agency inspector generals without giving notice to Congress or providing Congress with the rationale for the mass firings. The fired inspector generals received two sentence long emails informing them that they were being dismissed due to “changing priorities.” The firings removed independent non-partisan watchdogs, replacing them with political loyalists.

Whether the present Inspector Generals will respond appropriately to the letter of Senator Warren and her colleagues and their request for a formal evaluation of the personnel transfers and their impact on financial crime enforcement remains to be seen.