Noteworthy News

[Angrboda]

A quarter of FBI agents are assigned to immigration enforcement, per FBI data

Nearly a quarter of FBI agents across the country are currently assigned to immigration enforcement, with the number climbing to upward of 40 percent in the nation’s largest field offices, according to data from the FBI obtained by Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia) and shared with The Washington Post.

The large number of reassignments reflect a vast reshaping of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, which has focused on national security threats since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The intense focus on immigration has raised alarm among current and former FBI agents who say morale is low across the bureau as agents have less time to dedicate to the often complex cases they were hired to work on.

The Trump administration has long said that more of the FBI’s time is going into immigration enforcement, but the figure of almost 25 percent is the first precise recording of how big the shift has been. Warner requested the data in his role as the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

There's nothing inherently problematic about repurposing federal law enforcement. What is problematic is the lack of any formal legislative component specifying the repurposing being done. Like everything else Trump has done since January, this is another area in which Trump's actions take Congress out of the loop. From impounding allocated funds to violating legislation passed to limit the president's powers, he is effectively reallocating the powers of Congress as essentially prerogatives of the executive. This is a clear procedural evolution towards dictatorship. Having suborned any independence of the judiciary in his first term, he is now moving on to effectively nullify the send branch of government which ostensibly has the prerogative to oppose him.