U.S. Senator urges DHS to investigate whether to transfer agents from criminal cases to deportation
Since February Several news reports claim that a large number of agents for the Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) are the Department of Homeland Security’s Investigation Division, focusing on transnational crimes such as child exploitation, human trafficking and drug cartels – have been withdrawn from child exploitation cases and re-signed for immigration enforcement and arrest.
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden on Tuesday urged DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to “quickly” investigate the authenticity and extent of these reports on HSIs and share a letter with Wired. Attorney General Kufri has the right to review or investigate any activities or operations of DHS.
“Instead of locking in rapists, child predators and other violent criminals, [US president Donald] Trump appears to be shifting investigators to targeting chefs, farm workers and students,” Wyden said in the letter. “Congress and the American people will not tolerate the Trump administration’s disregard for the ongoing sexual abuse of vulnerable children. Therefore, we urge you to investigate these disturbing reports quickly. ”
Wyden told Wired in a written statement that there is no excuse to free investigators from the most outrageous cases involving child exploitation, adding: “Nothing is more preferred than protecting children at risk.”
Connect with several U.S. child welfare and advocacy organizations to comment on this article, however, they did not respond or declined to comment on the record. An official from a group that asked to be anonymous claimed that their group was unable to comment on the story due to concerns about retribution from the Trump administration.
In February, USA Today reported that HSI’s “whole investigation unit” would shift its focus primarily to immigration arrest and deportation rather than its typical scope of work. Then, Reuters reported in March that HSI agents were actively “redistributed” from cases they had been researching related to child exploitation, money laundering cases, drug trafficking and tax fraud. Then, their mission is immigration enforcement. At the time, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin told the media that the shift was a “wasteful, misleading transfer of resources” that “makes America less secure.”
The Atlantic reported in July that a senior HSI agent said the division was conducting a major criminal investigation into possession and sometimes opted not to adopt new cases (including drug cases, human trafficking cases and child exploitation cases) to enable agents to use in conventional litigation litigation lawsuits for immigration enforcement.
The reported shift in priority to HSI is at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) that the center received 20.5 million suspected child sexual exploitation techniques in 2024.
Children involved in AI-generated abuse of materials (which is also the HSI field) may also reach crisis levels. In 2024, NCMEC received about 67,000 tips on abused materials generated by AI, an increase of 1,325% from 2023.
