Who are the new deportation police?

The White House is demanding that ICE make 3,000 arrests per day – and it's pulling in agents from the FBI and the DEA to help. How Trump's push for mass deportations is reshaping U.S. law enforcement.

Nick Miroff, staff writer at The Atlantic. He covers immigration, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ted Hesson, immigration reporter for Reuters.

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.

John Tobon, former assistant director of Homeland Security Investigations Honolulu. He retired in January 2025.

Part I

ANTHONY BROOKS: The Trump administration is employing the full power of the federal government to crack down on illegal immigration, drafting officers from multiple federal agencies to chase down and arrest migrants who are already in the country. One of those arrests occurred last April in Kennett, Missouri, population 10,000.

Officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, shackled, a woman named Carol Mayorga and placed her in the back of a van.

CAROL MAYORGA: They handcuffed me in my wrist, my leg. And took me in the van. And the van was so dark. You cannot see anything.

BROOKS: Carol's legal name is Ming Li Hui, originally from Hong Kong.

She entered the U.S. in 2004 on a tourist visa. Carol overstayed her visa, but she eventually got authorization to work legally in the U.S. After telling a court she was escaping abuse by her mother, she worked for several years at a local family restaurant. Then at an appointment to renew her work permit, ICE officers detained her. When Carol spoke to NPR's Midwest newsroom from jail last month, she said she was worried about her three kids, ages 14, 12, and seven.

MAYORGA: My middle son, he make top 10 on his class. My daughter she love school. I don’t want to mix up their life. They’re doing so good here.

BROOKS: Carol was released from jail last week and could still face deportation, though her lawyer plans to sue.

Carol is among the tens of thousands of people arrested and detained by ICE in recent months. The Trump administration has said it wants to arrest 3,000 people per day and deport 1 million people per year.

To meet that demand, the White House is pulling in agents from across the government, from the ATF, the DEA, the FBI, and the U.S. Marshal service among other agencies to track down and arrest migrants. Increasingly, those arrests target groups of people. In San Diego last month, federal agents wearing face coverings and carrying weapons raided a popular Italian restaurant.

NEWS BRIEF: Heavily armed agents can be seen in full tactical gear as cars block the streets off. In this video, you can hear loud booms and sirens as community members surrounded their cars.

BROOKS: According to San Diego Station, KFMB-TV, four people were detained. Three from Mexico, one from Columbia, who are working as dishwashers and servers.

Protestors upset by the arrest took to the street outside the restaurant.

NEWS BRIEF: Pedro Rios with American Friend Service Committee was there and watched as people were taken away in handcuffs.

RIOS: The agents fired sound grenades, flashback grenades at the crowd.

BROOKS: KFMB reported that federal agents claim 19 restaurant employees, or roughly half the staff had fake green cards.

The push for mass arrests and deportations have sparked protests across the country, including in Los Angeles this past weekend. There, Trump has now called in the National Guard and the U.S. Marines to confront the protestors. This hour we're looking at how Trump is reshaping federal law enforcement in his push for mass deportations.

Nick Miroff is in Los Angeles and he joins us now. He's a staff writer at The Atlantic where he covers immigration. And Nick, thanks for joining On Point. Good to have you.

NICK MIROFF: My pleasure, Anthony. Good to be with you.

BROOKS: Yeah. So let's start with what's going on in Los Angeles right now. Tell us about the state of things.

Are there protests going on? Give us the latest.

MIROFF: Sure. I'm in downtown in LA right now. I've been here the past two days, and most of the protest activity has been focused on a very small area of downtown, around the federal building where ICE has its offices. That's about a block from LA City Hall, and on Sunday the protestors blocked the southbound lanes of 101 and set several Waymo self-driving vehicles on fire. Those images were the ones that made a lot of the headlines and captured the imagery, and got the administration officials really threatening more severe.

A more severe response, I should say. A lot of people who have came out to protest, I would say there were thousands there in downtown yesterday. Were doing so peacefully, calling for ICE to get out of LA. But there has certainly been an edgy, rowdier, element to the protest. And then, again, yesterday there was another crowd outside.

Standing off against national Guard troops, who were really just blocking the entrances to the federal buildings and guarding the buildings. But then LAPD and California Highway Patrol in a much larger presence. And then they began clearing those protestors starting in the late afternoon.

BROOKS: I see. Now, as we mentioned, President Trump called in the National Guard. He's also sent 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles. What is Trump saying about why he's doing that? What's the administration's thinking here?

MIROFF: I think that the administration wants to try to make a point that California's authorities, elected officials, namely Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass can't control the city on their own and they need the federal government to step in.

This is a way of kind of imposing the administration's will on a blue city, in a blue state, where his policies and his immigration crackdown is very unpopular.

BROOKS: Right. Yeah. Really making a point in a blue state around an issue that he ran on and feels like a lot of Americans care about.

So we're talking this hour about how President Trump is drafting agents from across the federal government to aid his deportation efforts. So that means it's not just ICE agents making arrests, but it's also DEA agents from the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, among others. How is this approach to confronting protesters in LA by calling in the National Guard, the Marines linked to this overall effort?

Can you describe the connection there?

MIROFF: Sure. What the administration is doing across the United States is very aggressive. What Trump has laid out is the most aggressive immigration crackdown we've ever seen. He literally said on the campaign trail that he wanted the biggest mass deportation campaign ever.

And of course, that was going to produce a backlash. And the backlash was gonna be biggest in places like Los Angeles, in U.S. cities that have large immigrant populations, that have developed for decades in this kind of balance in which people who come to this country without authorization and who work here can end up being contributing members of society and spend their lives raising families here.

And, for the most part, as long as they didn't get into some sort of criminal trouble with law enforcement, then they could make a life here. And that has been all dramatically upended by this campaign, especially as it widens and tries to pick up people who haven't committed crimes, and who are, like what we saw here, outstanding outside the Home Depot, looking for work.

And responding to that backlash and the protest that it triggers are a big challenge for law enforcement. And I think Trump, by mobilizing National Guard, gets to play the role of law and order president for the rest of the country, for his supporters in particular.

BROOKS: What are you hearing from protesters on the streets of LA?

What are they saying about seeing national, members of the National Guard and U.S. Marines in the streets of Los Angeles?

MIROFF: I should say we haven't seen the U.S. Marines deployed on the streets yet. Just they're very rumored that they're in route. Was certainly on the minds of people yesterday who I spoke to at the protest.

And the National Guard troops, again, were basically there to protect the federal building that houses the ICE offices that had been de-faced with graffiti and that type of thing over the past couple days. But most of the engagement with the protestors, the clearing of the streets, the flash bang grenades, the tear gas, that type of stuff, to clear the freeway.

That's all been LAPD and California Highway Patrol, with the support of some other local law enforcement agencies. Ironically, it's Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass whose forces are really responsible for engaging directly with the protestors so far.

BROOKS: And they're making the case that they have this situation under control.

And in fact, Governor Newsom has called the use of active-duty Marines illegal and said he would sue to prevent their deployment. Can you say a little bit more about Newsom's view on what's happening in his state?

MIROFF: Yeah. What Trump has done is to try to federalize the California National Guard.

That's the first time since 1965 that a president has done that to state's National Guard troops, and they're basically taking them under federal command and making them U.S. government troops rather than California national Guard. Governor Newsom is suing and saying that was an overreach.

And I think for the time being, having them just protecting federal buildings, certainly takes a little bit of a burden off of LAPD and allows the police to do some of their other work. There was some looting here in downtown LA overnight that everyone is just kind of waking up to.

And so I don't want to paint too rosy of a picture to make it sound like there's no challenge here for the police to face. And certainly, when you get large crowds of people and people really riled up. Then this kind of thing can happen. But if we were to see National Guard troops going out into the street and starting to engage protesters, which could happen today, I think that would really take things to another level.

BROOKS: Yeah. And we should note that we're having this conversation at 10:15 a.m. east Coast time on Tuesday. So it's early where you are in Los Angeles. What are you gonna be looking out for as this day gets up and running in Los Angeles?

MIROFF: I want to head out onto the streets to see some of the places that were looted.

And then the main thing I'm gonna be looking for is whether a large group of protesters will gather again downtown at these federal buildings, whether the National Guard and the police have established a larger security perimeter to keep people away. And then if the crowd is going to continue to grow in size or if people are gonna start to maybe hang back.

BROOKS: Alright, that's Nick Miroff, staff writer at The Atlantic. Thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. And take care out there. Be safe.

MIROFF: Thank you. My pleasure.

Part II

BROOKS: Joining us now is Ted Hesson. He's a reporter who covers immigration for Reuters. And Ted, it's good to have you. Thanks for joining us.

TED HESSON: Hi Anthony. Thank you for having me.

BROOKS: So Trump has a pretty big goal here. He wants to arrest 3,000 people a day, deport a million people a year. Is he gonna get there?

HESSON: This is a really challenging endeavor, and it's what President Trump promised on his campaign, and he's really made it a central part of his administration. They took office really trying what they were describing as a whole of government approach to deportations, and that meant really focusing the Homeland Security Department on the issue, but also pulling resources from other parts of the federal government and asking those agencies to focus on this.

Whether he can accomplish it or not is another question. The administration and Republicans are asking for an enormous sum of money right now for immigration enforcement in the spending bill that's being debated in Congress at the moment, and was previously passed in the House of Representatives.

And I think if that funding is delivered, then perhaps this goal becomes more plausible. If not, it could remain a challenge.

BROOKS: So I'm intrigued, and this is what we wanna focus on, this idea of pulling in agents from other federal agencies across the federal government to try to make this goal achievable.

Can you talk a little bit about that? Which agents from which agencies are being drafted for this cause?

HESSON: First of all, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, is essentially divided into two halves, and half of those are enforcement officers, the ones who are out making arrests of people in the country illegally and setting them for deportation.

And the other half are what's Homeland Security Investigations, which is ICE's investigative arm. And historically, that investigative arm has focused on more serious crimes. Transnational crimes, child exploitation drug crimes that cross borders. And since Trump's taken office, there's really been a move to redirect that agency to focus on immigration work.

And in some cases, that means detailing officers to actually assist with ICE arrests and go out in the early morning to arrest people. And in other cases, it means redirecting some of those investigative efforts they have to have more of an intersection with immigration.

BROOKS: I see.

Now, is there pushback from within ICE? In other words, those people who are doing those longer term, what some people might regard as more serious investigations around transnational terrorism, for example, is there pushback to this idea that they're being drafted, essentially, to go out in the streets and arrest people?

HESSON: No you're talking of an agency of thousands of people and hundreds who've been moved to direct immigration work, so I don't want to speak for everyone, and I don't think I could do that.

BROOKS: Sure.

HESSON: But that said we've certainly heard some degree of discomfort with it. You can imagine it's people who took a job thinking they'd be doing one thing, which is complex investigative work, serious criminals, and being asked to do something quite different.

Which is go out sometimes, and as we've seen recently, arrest people who may just be in their workplace or may just be at the Home Depot waiting for work. And it's a really shift. And I think that for some people, they're not comfortable with it or not happy with it. And historically, this investigative arm, HSI has wanted to distance itself to some degree from ICE, because of its reputation and the contentious nature of the work that it does.

BROOKS: Right. In fact, later this hour, we're gonna be talking to a former agent from HSI who left ICE just for this reason. So we'll be getting that perspective in a moment.

Ted, I'd love to, if you could explain what other agencies are involved. For example, the FBI, and I'm reading here from an article from NBC.com and it says that:

The FBI, where it was once unusual for special agents to go on immigration related law enforcement operations, according to multiple current and former law enforcement officials, field officers around the country have been ordered to assign significantly more agents to assist with ICE operations to arrest people on administrative immigration warrants.

So that's folks from the FBI. Who else is being asked to get involved in this effort?

HESSON: That's right. We've seen the FBI as you mentioned, and it's really been since the start of the Trump administration, this effort to pull resources from other federal agencies. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is one where there's been a significant amount of staff that's been assigned to work on immigration cases.

Also, the Drug Enforcement Administration is another place. Also, some other agencies where you might not have expected it. Pulling law enforcement officers from the Treasury Department, also asking State Department staffers to work on immigration work.

So there's really been a broad effort to pull people across the federal government to bolster ICE resources and to give them more capacity to make these arrests and deportations.

BROOKS: So while it gives ICE more capacity to make these arrests, it also raises the question, what about the work that these folks were doing before?

Who's doing that work and is that a concern?

HESSON: I think what you've seen with the Trump administration is immigration and illegal immigration is a major priority for them.

And they're willing to sacrifice other areas of federal government and including federal law enforcement. President Trump took office, he said illegal immigration was a national emergency right off the bat, and it really set the stage for this redirection of federal funding, federal resources to address it. Now that said, there have been some questions raised about spending in this area, and I mentioned before this bill in Congress that would devote upwards of $160 billion for immigration enforcement.

And even some Republicans in the Senate have raised questions about the spending there and said that it may be excessive and that it might be just wasting money on an issue that President Trump does seem to have confronted. Certainly, he's taken an aggressive approach to it.

And that just pouring more money in federal government resources into it may not be the answer.

BROOKS: Reading a quote here from Abigail Jackson, white House Spokesperson, she said in a statement that quote: Immigration security is national security. She went on to say: Enforcing our immigration laws and removing illegal aliens is one big way. President Trump is making America safe again.

Ted Hesson. Standby. I wanna introduce Jessica Vaughan. She's Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, and she joins us now. Jessica, good to have you.

JESSICA VAUGHAN: Hi Anthony and hi Ted.

BROOKS: And Jessica, I understand that you feel pretty good about what the Trump administration is doing. But let me ask you the first question that I asked Ted.

Is the goal of a million deportations a year achievable?

VAUGHAN: I think it's pretty ambitious. But we have to put this in the context of what the country has experienced over the preceding four years. And we've experienced an unprecedented surge of illegal migration. Probably about 9 million people have arrived outside of legal channels.

So this is no doubt a crisis that needs to be addressed. The strain on American communities has been huge. So I think it's appropriate to be focusing on this, making it a priority and drawing all the resources possible from the federal government and even state governments to help, considering what a problem it's been.

And we'll have to see if the funding issue is addressed in the spending bill. But I also think the institutional cooperation is a good thing over the long run.

BROOKS: And by the institutional cooperation, you're talking about the point that I was talking about with Ted and Nick Miroff earlier in the hour, and that is drawing in resources from other agencies, from ATF, from the FBI as well as agents from HSI, for example, which is supposed to be focused on things like transnational crime. That's a good idea. According, in your view.

VAUGHAN: It is a good idea. And many of these agents and officers have been used to working together on federal task forces on counter terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking, gangs, and so on. And the people who are the highest priority for ICE right now happen to be a lot of individuals involved in those kinds of crimes. I certainly am not hearing a lot of grumbling from other agencies, I'm sure there are some people who may be a little bit unhappy about it, but I think most of them see this as a common mission on behalf of public safety.

BROOKS: Is there a risk, though, and I brought this up with Ted. And we have heard, and it might be fair to characterize it as some grumbling, maybe it's a little more widespread, but maybe that's a good way to characterize it for the context of this conversation. Is there a risk in your view though, that this will come at the cost of other important law enforcement work?

In other words, if you have an agent, HSI, who might've been focused on transnational terrorism, which is an important issue for sure, and they're being essentially drafted to go out on the street and arrest people. Doesn't that come at a cost that we should be concerned about?

VAUGHAN: I'm not sure that's really happening.

I think there's a lot of overlap in the work that these officers and agents have already had. It's not clear that there's a cost yet. I think that the view from the White House and from the leaders of these enforcement agencies is that this surge of illegal migration that we've had has created new threats within our country.

That need to be addressed and that's a high priority. That's why they have to be nimble and shift resources and attention to shifting threats and vulnerabilities and that's what's happening here.

BROOKS: Ted Hesson, let me bring you back into this conversation.

Respond to what Jessica said. Does that sound reasonable to you, as someone who covers this issue? How do you respond to what Jessica's saying?

HESSON: I should start off by saying the Trump administration has not said explicitly how many federal agents have been moved from each agency to assist immigration work, so we don't have a completely clear portrait of it. And beyond that, as I mentioned before, there are those who are doing direct immigration work, literally just helping out ICE as they go and make their typical arrests that they would be doing, and then those who've just redirected the work they're doing to focus more on immigration.

It would be, it's really complicated to take all that into effect and then to say, what's the work they're not doing? And I think we don't have a good idea of that. And you can't say especially, look at HSI, the mission of trying to hunt down child trafficking or child exploitation online.

We don't know what they're not finding, because they're not sitting there doing those complex investigations. So I don't think it's so easy to say what's being missed. I think we can assume that something is, and particularly when you have federal agents who've been detailed to work with ICE, and I've seen it myself firsthand, and they're essentially there sometimes doing grunt work, assisting with processing someone who's been arrested.

They're just one extra body who has the law enforcement authority to make that immigration arrest. So I think it's clear that something's missing, because you pulled somebody out of their job and you sent them somewhere else, but we don't know exactly what it is.

BROOKS: Ted, I wanted to follow up, and I'll ask you this as well, Jessica, but Ted, let me stick with you.

And that is a question about accountability around some of these arrests. I covered a story a few weeks back in Southern New Hampshire about some ICE arrests at a restaurant in the southern part of the state. They were carried out by ICE agents. As well as agents from DEA, which is central to what we're talking about here.

The local community was very concerned because nobody really knew why these agents were in town. It surprised a lot of people, there wasn't a lot of information about it. And when I tried to find out, I put out calls to the DEA and to ICE, DEA responded immediately and said, oh, no. That's a ICE operation.

We don't have anything to say about it. Our agents were there, but we weren't involved. I tried to reach out to ICE, they wouldn't respond. So there was, because the responsibility for these arrests was fanned out across two agencies, there was a question of who's responsible and who's accountable in terms of what actions are being taken.

And I'm wondering if you've encountered anything like that, or what your thoughts are about that.

HESSON: When you see an ICE operation, they're the lead agency that's organizing it and running it, at least in what I've seen in my experience. So at a minimum, they should be responding and speaking to it.

And I think that's a question of accountability and transparency. Despite all the focus on President Trump's immigration agenda. The Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration have put out very little statistics and information about the actual arrests that they're making.

So there is a question about what exactly is going on, the scope of it. And I think even regular reports that have been issued for years under previous administrations have stopped at this point. So I think it does raise some questions about what's going on and particularly with things being sped up so much and pushing ICE to do more.

There is a frantic scramble by the media and others to learn about what's happened. And it's not always so quick, easy to do it in a timely fashion. From those other agencies perspective, you would think they would also want to weigh in on the behavior of their agents and what exactly they're doing when they're out there.

Of course, that may be their discretion to just defer to the lead agency, as you probably know, in law enforcement, that they'll sometimes do that.

BROOKS: Sure. Jessica Vaughan, your response to this general idea of we're witnessing this very ambitious program, as Ted said, it zooming along at light speed and sometimes it's not always clear what exactly is going on.

VAUGHAN: I agree with Ted. I would like to see some more transparency and statistics released on not just the operations, individual operations, how things are progressing generally in terms of arrests and deportations. But I have seen ICE be pretty proactive in releasing information on individuals that have been picked up in certain operations when there has been some disinformation in the media.

That's helpful, but that's on a case-by-case basis. Really not giving us the big picture, which I think is important for everyone to have.

BROOKS: Jessica, we started this hour talking about the situation in Los Angeles and President Trump of course calling in the National Guard as well as deploying active service Marines.

As someone who is concerned about this issue of dealing with illegal immigration in this country. Is that an important set of resources to bring to this problem? Because arguably, from Governor Newsom's point of view, it's a distraction and it's creating a lot of political noise, but not necessarily helping the situation on the ground.

What's your view?

VAUGHAN: I think it is appropriate to bring in these resources to protect the federal building and to protect the public and to give ICE space to do its job. And I think it's important for people to understand also why it is that ICE has been active in making street arrests in Los Angeles in particular. And that's because they are not able to get cooperation, because of the state sanctuary policies and the local sanctuary policies, to make their arrests in safe places like jails. Over the last two and a half years, more than 13,000 ICE detainers have been blocked. And ICE couldn't get custody of people. So that's why they're on the streets more, is because of these sanctuary policies. I hope that will change.

BROOKS: Alright, we're gonna talk about those sanctuary policies a little bit later.

Part III

BROOKS: Ted, I want to pick up on a point that Jessica Vaughan raised, talking about sanctuary communities, states and cities that don't want to cooperate, have their local law enforcement folks cooperate with federal immigration officials. And this really raises, I mean, there are lots of questions about Trump's push for mass deportations.

But at the end of the day, do you get the sense that this issue continues to be a political win for the Trump administration. That is crossings on the southern border are down, and to the extent that Democrats are pushing back, you're hearing from blue states like California and like Massachusetts, where I'm reporting from now, where the message is about sanctuary communities, and how local law enforcement shouldn't cooperate with ICE, which is a politically difficult needle to thread. It seems to me. It seems like it's difficult to say, we're for the rule of law, but we don't want our local law enforcement to help federal agents uphold the rule of law.

What's your view on this sort of thorny issue, this thorny political issue for Democrats?

HESSON: I think we can start off with the issue for President Trump. He ran on this issue, and it was a priority during his first term in office and even more so now. And when we look at polling, we see that he's polling better on immigration as a topic than some other really important areas for him, such as the economy or his tariffs.

So it does seem like something he and his administration are willing to come back to and focus on. Now, that said, when you dig into that polling, quite a bit of that support is coming from Republicans and his base. So while he may be doing better on that, it's mostly from the Republican side of things.

And then, on this issue of sanctuary cities, which is more complex, I think, first of all, there's a bit of a debate over what is a sanctuary.

The Trump administration, about two weeks ago or so, came out with a list of places that it said were sanctuaries and it received a lot of pushback, both from the cities themselves and from sheriffs around the country.

Who said, how did they end up on this list first of all? They really had no idea. They had never passed a sanctuary law, and they weren't really clear what the criteria was. And it became actually a bit thorny politically for the Trump administration, which actually pulled down the list of cities and hasn't reposted it since for about a week now.

So it can be complex, and we should also come back to the idea of these sanctuaries. For the most part, the main thing that's happening there is that they are not cooperating with ICE to alert them when someone's being released from their jail. Who's in the country illegally, and what ICE is asking for is full cooperation so that they can come to the jail and pick that person up and process them potentially for deportation.

So that's really the crux of things. And I'm wondering more and more now, as these ICE operations expand, and they become broader, how much that can be used as a rationale for why ICE needs to go into the streets.

I know Jessica said that, and it's the Trump administration's talking point that they wouldn't have to come into Los Angeles and Chicago and New York if these cities just cooperated with them and released people in jails. A lot of the people being picked up off the street aren't coming out of jails. They're people with no criminal records in the U.S. So it is a much different dynamic.

And it's not clear that even if they were cooperating, would that mean ICE wouldn't be coming into the streets and making those non-criminal arrests.

BROOKS: It's a really good point, a really good question. Ted standby. I wanna introduce John Tobon. He's a former assistant Director of Homeland Security Investigations in Honolulu.

He retired in January 2025. And John Tobon, thanks for joining us. It's really good to have you.

JOHN TOBON: Hi Anthony. Thank you for having me on.

BROOKS: So we wanted to talk to you because one of the focuses of this hour is really how the Trump administration is reorganizing law enforcement in the U.S. as he focuses on this campaign to detain and deport folks.

And you have an interesting point of view about this because you spent more than 30 years, if I have this correctly, 30 years in your career, you worked for Homeland Security Investigations, before that, U.S. Customs. And so start off by telling us what was the focus of your work?

TOBON: And I think you've covered it already, the focus of my work as part of the U.S. Custom Service and the Office of Investigations, and then later on, Homeland Security Investigations was transnational crime.

Our goal was to find violations of criminal law that find contraband, that cross borders, whether it was a virtual border, a physical border, and obviously deal with the individuals behind that. Yeah, and when I say that, I'm talking about major cartels. So HSI and the U.S. Custom Service have had a role, a very important role, in taking down most of the major cocaine cartels and identifying high level transnational criminal organizations since the inception of the agency in 1789.

So this is not something that has only been going on for 10, 20 years, or even since the beginning of DHS as a department.

BROOKS: So when you were working, doing this work for HSI, most recently, your focus wasn't making arrests of people who were in the country illegally, for example, right?

TOBON: It was absolutely not. And it's not to say that we did not support the immigration mission, because our focus was criminal investigations. Our focus was to look at the networks that are utilized, and the individuals that run these networks, that allow people to be smuggled in, that provide fake documents to these individuals. And also focus on the employers that look for this population to really compete unfairly in the marketplace.

BROOKS: I see.

TOBON: That was our focus.

BROOKS: So how did that focus shift with the start of the second Trump administration and its push to ramp up deportations? Did it shift?

TOBON: It shifted pretty suddenly. And obviously, a lot of it was driven because of the rhetoric that was heard on the campaign trail.

It was also through the experience of those of us that were around in 2016 during the first Trump administration, and the shift that we saw there. And we had a feeling, and in some instances were told that this time it would be significantly different, and it has been.

BROOKS: And describe that in a little more detail.

How is it different?

TOBON: There would be no room for trying to reason or trying to dissuade people from doing what they wanted to do. That it was, this is what has to be done, this is what they want done, and nobody's asking for your opinion.

BROOKS: But I'm sorry to push you a little bit here, but when you say that they wanted things done in a certain way, what are you referring to specifically?

What kind of work here?

TOBON: That the focus of the agency would shift.

BROOKS: I see.

TOBON: To immigration work. And a lot of the other programs that we were focusing on would go away.

BROOKS: Gotcha.

TOBON: And one of the biggest things that went away was we were, we had achieved a level of independence because HSI, as an agency, did not and has not wanted to be associated with any type of civil immigration enforcement.

And so this is also something that is not new. This goes back to the previous Trump administration and even before then, when our goal has always been to separate from immigration and customs enforcement so that we can conduct our investigations and do our work without having to deal with all of the negative connotations that come about as a result of that association with ICE, and with civil immigration enforcement.

BROOKS: Got it. So you worked a full career and then decided to retire. Working 31 years you're within your rights. Anyone would say, wow, well done. Thank you for your service. That makes a lot of sense that you've decided to move on. But did your decision to retire have to do with this concern about the shift, this shift of priorities?

TOBON: Yes. It came into play. So I retired as assistant director for countering transnational organized crime.

And so I was getting ready to move back to D.C. to take over that role on a permanent basis. And it's as we have seen, that is a portion of the agency, that is a role that has not been the priority when it was the priority before. So I went from being the assistant director of the tip of the spear, if you will, to being the assistant director of a portion of the agency that was not going to be a focus. Or even a priority.

BROOKS: And are you worried about that? To the extent that with this new focus on rounding up, deporting, trying to get to a million deportations here, what important work, are you concerned about the important work that is not being done because of that new focus?

TOBON: Absolutely. And the other point, which hasn't been mentioned and was brought up when you guys were discussing the collaboration between all the federal agencies, every single federal agency, every single one is facing and has been facing for the last five or 10 years, significant staffing shortages.

So everybody was already operating with less than they could to do the job that they were assigned to do. And so now we are adding this additional, this additional requirement, but we're not bringing in additional personnel. So there is a lot of important work that isn't being done.

And this is actually where the rhetoric does not meet the statistics in a lot of senses, the number of criminal aliens is not the number that individuals had spoken about or had promised, and so therefore it was like, okay, that's not enough. Let's just go get the number to meet the number. And so that means that important drug trafficking investigations, human smuggling, human trafficking, cyber-crime investigations, fraud investigations, financial crime and money laundering investigations are not being, they're not being investigated, which is bad enough, but they're also not being funded.

Because the funding is being siphoned off from those programs to support this effort and this is an expensive effort. Because when you have individuals out there, Saturdays and Sundays, which now the agency is working seven days a week, labor laws require you to pay Sunday pay overtime and all of these, so it actually becomes a very expensive endeavor to take on.

BROOKS: Got it. Ted Hesson, I'm wondering what you're thinking as you listen to John Tobon. What comes to your mind as someone who's been reporting on this for a while?

HESSON: I think in the longer term there will be morale questions. Certainly, for those federal officers who were redirected from their home agencies to assist with this work.

And if it keeps going on for months or even years, there'll be questions as to whether they want to keep doing it. And I think there are also questions about the tempo of the work, even for the core ICE agents who are doing it. As John mentioned, being asked to work through weekends, some people like the overtime. And some don't wanna be working, six, seven days straight.

So I think there will be questions as to how things go forward and one thing we should keep in mind, this bill that's in Congress right now that would really super fund immigration enforcement, would take ICE staff from about 20,000 people, a little more than that right now, and add 10,000 more ICE officers.

So there'd be a question, can you hire that many? Are there that many people interested in jumping into this work? And John may be equipped to answer it, but I think that they'll be faced with some challenges in the longer term if this is going to be a permanent redirection. Where you have HSI mostly focusing on immigration work and other federal agencies redirecting some of their resources towards it as well. Will people wanna keep doing that job if that's not what they signed up for?

BROOKS: Sure. Yeah. John, respond to that. Do you think the people are out there to do that?

And by the way, just to clarify, when Ted was referring to that bill, it's that one big, beautiful bill. It's the sort of Republican blueprint for Trump's agenda, which includes big money for immigration enforcement. But John, respond to what Ted was talking about. I'm particularly interested in this idea of it raises questions of morale within the agency, challenges morale within the agency.

TOBON: So there have been morale issues within HSI because of the association with ICE since March 1, 2003. So this came with the agency. There was a lot of issues with legacy immigration special agents and legacy U.S. custom special agents because it was a different culture, and it was different training requirements and different qualifications to get those jobs.

So the morale issue is built or baked into the cake, if you will, in terms of the process of hiring large numbers of individuals there. This is not a position where you get, you go through two interviews and then you show up and you do your work. There are several weeks, months of training at a location that has already space limitations.

So to become an HSI special agent, the process of getting hired on is about a year and a half, which includes a background investigation, which includes all sorts of preliminary checks, and then it requires a four month stay at the federal law enforcement training center in Glynco, Georgia.

And there you go through a process, you go through two separate phases where you can actually fail out, because if you don't meet the physical requirements or because you do not meet the academic requirements. And then you come out into the workforce. I ran, I oversaw our academy when I was assistant director for CTOC within HSI.

And I can tell you that the capacity of the academy to provide seats for us to put people through training is less than a thousand a year. Because of the intensity, the length, and obviously you're going to have a high failure rate because the standards are very high.

BROOKS: All right, so John, we're gonna have to stop there, but we take the point.

Big challenges here to come up with the personnel, and this is all related to big shifts in priorities at the federal level.

The first draft of this transcript was created by Descript, an AI transcription tool. An On Point producer then thoroughly reviewed, corrected, and reformatted the transcript before publication. The use of this AI tool creates the capacity to provide these transcripts.