The Justice Department plans to bolster enforcement and deportation work in 25 cities across the United States.
The Trump administration is directing more F.B.I., drug and gun agents toward immigration enforcement as it ramps up a crackdown across more than two dozen U.S. cities in the coming days, according to five people familiar with the directive.
Justice Department officials have decided that about 2,000 of their federal agents — from the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the U.S. Marshals Service — will be enlisted to help the Department of Homeland Security find and arrest undocumented immigrants for the remainder of the year, these people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the effort, which has yet to be announced.
The move would signal a sharp escalation in the administration’s effort to enact a crucial element of President Trump’s agenda and would be a noticeable shift in the typical work of the Justice Department, particularly the F.B.I. Diverting Justice Department resources to focus solely on immigration also raises questions about whether such a change would affect other priorities, like investigating financial crimes or corruption.
Already, federal agents in the Justice Department have been assisting immigration agents in American cities.
The new effort would significantly expand on that work, adding more personnel, the people said. Law enforcement officials have been told that in every city subject to the new decree, F.B.I. agents should account for 45 percent of the Justice Department contingent, they said.
The proposal comes as the Trump administration has dialed back numerous types of white-collar crime investigations, including foreign corruption, adherence to anti-money-laundering rules in the cryptocurrency industry and illicit foreign lobbying of U.S. officials.