Federal agents have shifted consideration away from severe gun crimes and shady weapons sellers to give attention to President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants and deployments to patrol cities, in accordance to present and former officers and knowledge reviewed by NCS.
As a part of a surge of 23,000 federal officers from a slew of companies despatched to work on Trump’s deportation efforts, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has reassigned 80% of particular agents to immigration cases, in accordance to a former senior official on the company. Other agents have been assigned to surges Trump has ordered to Washington, DC, Los Angeles and different cities.
ATF is only one of a number of federal legislation enforcement companies which have felt a notable influence on regular duties whereas aiding with the immigration mission, a NCS evaluation has discovered.
ATF has misplaced one in each seven firearms license investigators to job reductions and retirements this 12 months – and stands to lose 550 of the remaining 600 below Trump’s new proposed price range. The company additionally has adopted onerous new guidelines that make it almost not possible to revoke licenses from firearms sellers who fail to do mandated background checks or who break different legal guidelines, in accordance to former and present ATF officers.
As a end result, ATF didn’t transfer to revoke a single supplier’s license within the first 4 and a half months of this 12 months, a former senior official stated, including that the bureau was on tempo for at the least a 90% drop from final 12 months below President Joe Biden – when 195 sellers misplaced the power to promote weapons.
One ATF investigator stated the shift in priorities is definite to have lethal penalties.
“They’re de-regulating an industry that sells tools that can take people’s lives in seconds,” stated the agent who spoke on the situation of anonymity out of worry of reprisal. “We’ll have guns getting into the hands of people who definitely shouldn’t have them.”
A NCS investigation in 2019 documented how unlicensed weapons can wreak violent havoc and drive vital crime nationally.
Critics say the results at ATF mirror the broader prices of Trump’s relentless immigration focus and his push to lower down company staffing – a pattern mirrored in a drop in legal referrals to the Department of Justice from different companies, together with an 8.6% lower in Drug Enforcement Administration cases by way of July in contrast with a 12 months in the past, in accordance to information obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. ATF has seen a 2% decline, that knowledge present.
But the drop in drug and gun cases is probably going steeper than these statistics present, present and former company officers stated. The statistics don’t point out what sort of legal cost every company has filed with the DOJ – which means that referrals from arrests made by ATF agents working immigration raids or metropolis patrols, quite than gun cases, may very well be included within the knowledge, TRAC stated.
At the FBI, 23% of agents have been detailed to give attention to immigration, in accordance to statistics shared with NCS by Virginia Sen. Mark Warner’s workplace – together with about 45% of agents within the 25 largest subject workplaces. Similarly, about three-fourths of DEA agents, a 3rd of US deputy marshals, and almost all Homeland Security Investigations agents have been diverted to work on immigration, in accordance to ICE documents detailing assignments by way of the top of August that had been first obtained by the Cato Institute.
Trump received reelection on a marketing campaign that promised mass deportations and a crackdown on crime. In a press release, the White House stated its efforts utilizing federal officers have led to the seize of gang members and a renewed give attention to legislation enforcement.
“Despite fake news narratives, the Administration is holding all criminals accountable whether they’re illegal aliens or American citizens,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson advised NCS.
The DOJ, in a press release, additionally disputed that the immigration push was affecting different legal enforcement.
“Our mission is to prosecute criminals, get illegal guns off our streets, and protect all Americans from violent crime, which can be done while simultaneously assisting our partners with immigration enforcement efforts,” a DOJ spokesperson stated in a press release.
The DOJ assertion additionally stated ATF agents have charged greater than 4,000 suspects since January and seized greater than 22,000 weapons. It isn’t clear how these numbers evaluate to a 12 months earlier.
However, a former senior ATF official stated the overwhelming majority of suspects arrested by the company this 12 months got here in immigration cases – not gun investigations.
“It’s what they’re not doing,” stated Scott Shuchart, a former ICE assistant director for regulatory affairs and coverage. “They are harming the country by undermining federal law enforcement… They are going to get Americans killed so they can deport foreigners.”
The ATF has been one of many hardest hit companies by the White House’s diversion of federal officers.
The company’s roughly 5,000 staff embody about 600 investigators, who conduct 1000’s of inspections yearly of gun sellers and federal explosives licensees, and about 2,500 particular agents, who examine arson, bombings, the unlawful use and trafficking of firearms or explosives, and incidents of terrorism, amongst different crimes.
Work in each these sections has slowed sharply, present and former ATF staff who spoke to NCS stated, with agents moved to assist with immigration enforcement and crime prevention in DC and elsewhere.
“The number of criminal investigations has bottomed out,” stated a former senior ATF government, who requested not to be named. “ATF agents essentially aren’t opening cases solely based on domestic firearms trafficking.”
While ATF officers count on these agents to return to their regular work in some unspecified time in the future, the company additionally faces a greater than $400 million lower within the Trump administration’s proposed price range for the brand new fiscal 12 months starting October 1 – roughly 1 / 4 of its full price range.
Former ATF officers stated the bureau already has misplaced greater than 100 inspectors and supervisors to attrition and reductions-in-force this 12 months.
The Trump administration’s coverage decisions even have deeply affected the company – significantly round gun laws.
In early April, the ATF repealed the Biden administration’s “Zero Tolerance Policy,” which allowed inspectors to advocate expedited revocation of firearms licenses for sure severe violations. That Biden coverage had resulted in a rise in revocations, up to 195 in 2024.
Attorney General Pam Bondi stated the rule had “unfairly targeted law-abiding gun owners.”
ATF, which beforehand made revocations knowledge and notices of revocations public, hasn’t printed that knowledge since Trump took workplace.
But as one results of the coverage change, these inspectors nonetheless on the job are taking away far fewer licenses from gun sellers who break the legislation, agents stated. Now, whatever the severity of the violation, any license revocations should be accepted by a string of senior leaders, inside ATF emails obtained by NCS present.
“Since January, there’s been a total 180º on our authority and what we can do,” stated an ATF investigator, who requested not to be named as a result of they had been talking with out authorization. “As soon as the new administration was in, we got directed from leadership to put a full stop on all revocations of federal firearms licenses.”
The investigator added, “We can’t revoke someone’s license; at most what we can do is issue a warning letter or have a warning conference. Even that is just a slap on the wrist. It isn’t anything that would put these guys out of business.”
ATF, in a press release on its web site, stated that the bureau is “ushering in a new chapter – marked by transparency, accountability, and partnership with the firearms industry.”
Having fewer inspectors on the job has additionally led to fewer legal referrals to DOJ, stated a former senior bureau official who requested not to be named. Previously, a couple of third of ATF’s legal firearm trafficking investigations stemmed from leads that got here by way of inspections, the official stated.
“Without that information, there will be a drastic decline in the number of traffickers that are identified and investigated. So, this has the potential to not only crush law enforcement’s ability to obtain any investigative lead through (gun) trace(s), but also, it’s going to completely hamper ATF’s ability to investigate firearms trafficking,” the official stated.
Pam Hicks, former ATF chief counsel, stated that slicing inspections “makes it less likely a crime gun can be completely traced next time. It undermines the entire system of how firearms laws work, of how the system is designed to work.”
Fewer inspections can also make it simpler for traffickers who promote weapons to cartels in Mexico.
“Seventy percent of weapons recovered in Mexico trace back to the US,” stated Topher McDougal, a professor on the University of San Diego who has studied gun trafficking. He and a colleague used gun-tracing knowledge that the US authorities doesn’t launch to the general public however does present to the Mexican authorities that was leaked in a hack of Mexican navy information final 12 months.
That knowledge confirmed that firearms license inspections considerably have an effect on gun trafficking to Mexico, McDougal stated. On common, a licensee who obtained a warning letter or discover of violation from the ATF was “90% less likely to have its weapons show up in Mexico the following year,” he stated.
Even the commerce affiliation for the firearms business expressed concern in regards to the severity of the proposed ATF price range and staffing cuts, saying they “might be better done with a scalpel instead of a meat cleaver.”
The Trump administration has not stated how lengthy it plans to preserve federal legislation enforcement agents on immigration assignments. At Trump’s course, agents from 13 federal companies, together with ATF, FBI and DEA, not too long ago deployed in Memphis, Tennessee.
Federal legislation enforcement companies are exempt from furloughs throughout the federal government shutdown that began October 1. With Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought telling Congress that layoffs, which began Friday, might goal companies that don’t match into the Trump administration’s priorities, it’s unclear how the shutdown will have an effect on ATF, the FBI and another companies.
Other companies past ATF are additionally feeling the pressure.
At the FBI, “a lot of the field offices have been told a third of your agents need to work on immigration issues,” an individual conversant in the bureau’s operations advised NCS. “A lot of people, you’re going to lose your sources, you’re going to stop an investigation, to do street patrol in DC … Obviously other things can’t get done, if you’re doing these patrols.”
Christopher O’Leary, a former senior government on the FBI who now works for The Soufan Group, an intelligence and safety consultancy, stated that pulling agents into immigration or policing metropolis streets essentially means dropping different cases.
“The FBI has a finite amount of resources,” he stated. “You have to give something else up. They’re not only giving up counterterrorism and counterespionage, but they’ve also turned away from white-collar crime, fraud and public corruption cases.”
At the FBI, the shortfall has been aggravated by purges of greater than two dozen agents and leaders fired or pressured to resign for his or her work investigating the January 6 riot or for being perceived as opposed to Trump’s agenda. Further, an individual conversant in the bureau advised NCS that greater than 300 extra agents stepped down on the finish of September, taking the Trump administration’s “fork in the road” retirements.
The White House’s use of agents in immigration points is driving agents to retire early or discover different work, some former officers stated.
“There’s a real disturbance throughout the organization,” stated O’Leary, the previous FBI government, of his former company. “If people are close to retirement they’re counting down the days.” As for these being fired or pressured to take early retirement, he stated, “When they’re thrown out, the younger agents who look up to them are asking is this the right place.”
For agents who keep on the job, the diversions are driving a morale disaster that goes hand in hand with the drop in prosecutions.
“No one signs up to be an FBI agent to go into a kitchen and arrest someone washing dishes, or joins the DEA to stop a landscaping truck,” stated former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske. “They’re all used to being deployed for significant issues.”
NCS’s Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.
Do you may have direct data of how the diversion to immigration enforcement is affecting the power of federal legislation enforcement agents to do their ordinary legal work? We’d like to hear from you. Please contact us at [email protected].