Homeland Security Missions Falter Amid Focus on Deportations
Under President Trump, an agency intended to keep Americans safe has diverted resources from combating child abuse, trafficking and terrorism.
The changes have extended deep into D.H.S.’s public-safety mission, as the Coast Guard has diverted aircraft to transport immigrants between detention centers and the department’s law enforcement academy has delayed training for many agencies to prioritize new immigration officers.
The Times investigation is based on previously undisclosed internal documents from D.H.S. — including statistical reports about department workloads, search warrants and arrests — obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The Times also spoke with more than 65 officials who have worked in the federal government during the current Trump administration, in addition to local authorities and others who collaborate with the department. Most of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters and out of fear of retribution.
The overhaul represents a striking departure for the behemoth agency that Congress created in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The Homeland Security Department was tasked with preventing terrorism, protecting the president, investigating transnational crime and responding to natural disasters, among other duties. Immigration enforcement was one of many responsibilities, but it was not envisioned as D.H.S.’s singular function.
Today, the Trump administration has remade the agency into a veritable Department of Deportation.
The shift has had consequences.
Homeland security investigators worked approximately 33 percent fewer hours on child exploitation cases from February through April compared to their average in prior years, according to a Times analysis of data obtained through the F.O.I.A. lawsuit.
This month, the search-and-rescue leader for a Coast Guard regional command center was told he had to report within days to Texas for a monthslong border deployment, leaving other staff members to cover for him, according to a person familiar with the situation and documents viewed by The Times.
D.H.S. said that the Coast Guard had transported more than 7,300 immigrants so far this year. A Coast Guard spokesman said it “carefully balances all operations and mission requirements, including search and rescue, to ensure readiness is not compromised.”
Human trafficking
The pressure to ramp up low-level immigration enforcement has had negative impacts on more complex human smuggling and sex and labor trafficking cases, according to federal officials.
One federal prosecutor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that such cases were stagnating as H.S.I. investigators were sidetracked with immigration roundups. Agents from H.S.I.’s Center for Countering Human Trafficking, which assists trafficking investigations, have been reassigned to Mr. Trump’s anti-crime crackdown in Washington, according to a federal law enforcement official.
And one former law enforcement official who now works in the travel industry said that after he tried to report sex trafficking at hotels to H.S.I., he was told that agents might not be able to investigate urgently because of immigration duty.
D.H.S. disputed that those investigations had been affected.
How The Times Analyzed D.H.S. Data
Through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, The New York Times obtained Department of Homeland Security statistical reports that indicate the monthly number of hours worked, arrests made, and search warrants executed by Homeland Security Investigations staff working on investigations into child exploitation, immigration, and other crimes.
The Times received two responses, one generated in April and the other in June, with monthly figures going back to to 2022 and 2007, respectively. The response created in June included some figures that were greater than those in the April report.
As a result, The Times took a cautious approach in quantifying trends. To estimate the hours worked during February, March and April, the first three full months of the administration, The Times took into account the percentage increase for a comparable period between the two reports. Because the revisions followed a less predictable pattern for arrests and victims, The Times decided against citing direct figures for those categories, although the provisional figures also showed declines.
D.H.S. did not respond to questions seeking clarity on the data.
Reporting was contributed by John Ismay, Eric Schmitt, Sheera Frenkel, Alicia Parlapiano, Albert Sun, Eileen Sullivan, Jeff Adelson, Kate Conger, Alex Klavens, Maxine Joselow and Devlin Barrett. Susan C. Beachy, Emily Powell, Julie Tate, Kirsten Noyes and Alain Delaquérière contributed research.