The Trump administration is building up federal manpower and resources to meet the White House’s desire to triple the number of daily immigration arrests – signaling a renewed push to go well beyond efforts from previous administrations.

The White House is putting intense pressure on law enforcement agencies across the government to meet a goal of a million deportations a year. That’s led to a surge of agents and officers across the federal government focusing their attention on arrests and deportation efforts – and in some cases straining resources.

At the FBI, hundreds of agents have been reassigned to immigration-related duties, raising concerns among agents that the shift could hinder important national security investigations, including into terror threats and espionage by China and Russia, according to people familiar with the matter.

Top FBI officials have provided little guidance to field offices on how agents are expected to increase immigration arrest numbers while also working their top priority cases, the sources said.

FBI agents have been told by supervisors not to document moving resources away from high-priority cases toward immigration-related work, according to one person familiar with the matter.

FBI agents typically log hours toward specific threats or assignments, but officials appear to be trying to avoid creating a paper trail that would show that the FBI is pulling resources away from national security threats to immigration, the source said. As a result, some field offices are declining to take on new investigations of certain threats.

There are also incentive efforts underway.

Senior FBI officials in New York this week sent an email to its workforce of more than 1,000 agents promising overtime pay if they helped with “enforcement and removal operations,” according to an email obtained by CNN.

FBI agents who work on the enforcement and removal “surge” through the end of the fiscal year, which is September 30, could earn a transfer “to the division of their choosing,” the email said.

Some FBI offices in border states have already diverted resources from countering cybercrime toward immigration issues, said a former FBI agent who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve their relationship with former colleagues.

“While the FBI does not comment on specific personnel decisions, our agents and support staff are dedicated professionals working around the clock to defend the homeland and crush violent crime — a mission which certainly overlaps with the consequences of the previous administration’s four-year open border policies,” FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said in a statement to CNN. “We are proud to work with our interagency partners to keep the American people safe.”

Trump officials initially said arrests of immigrants would focus on those who pose public safety or national security threats. And while people who fall under that category are still being detained, the aperture has widened as people without criminal records have been picked up and deported.

The all-hands-on-deck-for-immigration approach is raising critical questions inside the FBI and other law enforcement agencies about how they use limited resources to execute their mission.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/29/politics/white-house-immigration-arrests-law-enforcement-agencies