The Trump administration is taking the novel step of turning to other agencies to quickly bolster its immigration enforcement workforce as it prioritizes arrests and deportation.
The Department of Homeland Security is tapping other agencies and federal groups — from the U.S. Marshals Service to the IRS — to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to memos published by DHS and emails obtained by NPR.
Sarah Saldaña, former director for ICE under President Barack Obama, said it's common for law enforcement agencies to assist one another. For example, IRS or Drug Enforcement Administration agents might help with collecting evidence related to fraud or human and drug trafficking, she said.
But the new directives seem different, she said.
"What is unusual is to tap them as a general rule, to be available to presumably expand the reach of either the removal officers or the investigative agents," Saldaña said. "That's unusual because they have their own missions and their own lanes."
The ICE workforce, some 20,800 people, is smaller than that of Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and hasn't grown for decades, according to a 2024 year-end report.
Officials have long warned that staffing levels within the agencies that oversee immigration enforcement at DHS have been below what is needed, no matter which party is in the White House. ICE oversees domestic and international investigations through its Homeland Security Investigations department and deportations through its Enforcement and Removal Operations branch.
Now, officers are facing more pressure. White House leadership has quickly grown frustrated with the pace of arrests. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told CNN that the agency has a daily goal of arresting at least 75 people per each of its 20 field offices — but would like to surpass that target.
"U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement recognizes the importance of its relationships with its law enforcement partners to carry out its mission in a way that best serves national security, public safety and border security," an ICE spokesperson said. "ICE has always coordinated with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies as part of its mission."
But employees across government are concerned that they might not be fully equipped to assist in the new mission, even as ICE officers face the pressure of steep arrest quotas.
Bringing in other agencies
In the first week of his second term, Trump officials issued a directive they considered "essential to fulfilling President Trump's promise to carry out mass deportations."
The memo gave law enforcement officials in the U.S. Marshals Service, the DEA, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons authority to investigate and apprehend people suspected of being in the country without authorization. Most of those officials did not previously have duties that overlapped with ICE's removal mission.
"For decades, efforts to find and apprehend illegal aliens have not been given proper resources. This is a major step in fixing that problem," said then-acting DHS Secretary Benjamine Huffman said in a statement. The department has since highlighted the collaborations on social media.
The move came after U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last month, requesting that "qualified officials" from the Internal Revenue Service's criminal investigations unit help with immigration enforcement tasks. That included assisting with investigating human smuggling, overseeing contracts, managing detention dockets, and physically escorting or supporting the transportation and removals of people in the U.S. without legal status.
The administration is also relying on immigration detention and support from the military, including at military bases around the country.
Saldaña, the Obama-era official, said she can foresee pitfalls in bringing in others to assist with deporting those without legal status, for example, because other agencies don't know ICE's mission, and procedures.
Eddie Walker, president of the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 247, agreed that it was a new policy for agents to help across the board with ICE efforts.
"It's certainly unorthodox," Walker said. "I'm not sure how many people would leap to that job. It seems like a very different type of job."
Noem later in February also signed memorandums deputizing up to 600 special agents within the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service across the country to help with arrests and deportations.
ICE appears to be trying to source workers from other agencies within DHS, too.
An email obtained by NPR shows that in early February, the USCIS Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate emailed some of their employees working remotely. Those workers, who are trained to investigate immigration-related fraud, were notified that their names had been "put forward" for consideration to serve on short-term ICE details and ICE task forces.
"We are reaching out to let you know that you may be contacted and that you are expected to confirm availability upon request of that communication," the USCIS email states.
It is not clear how many employees in total have been deputized to work for ICE from other agencies, and how effective their support has been.
Pushback from employees, Democrats
But federal employees and Democratic lawmakers have protested some of the reassignments.
Four Bureau of Prison facilities are currently holding about 700 immigration detainees, according to Kathleen Toomey, associate deputy director of the BOP. The use of federal prisons to house detainees was what Trump also relied on in his first term in office.
A letter Democrats sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi raised alarm that the facilities may not be able to handle the shift in the prison population. A separate letter from Democrats sent to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, included a statement from an anonymous BOP employee.
"We have not been trained or employed for this purpose, and we don't know what these individuals are being detained for," the employee wrote. "BOP employees did not sign up for this. We have not been trained for this. We are not being paid for this. And it is not in our contracts."
Congressional funding needs
Congress is permitted to expand ICE's capacity and abilities by enlarging its budget, which could curtail the need for ICE to source workers from other agencies.
"Tom Homan said, 'I am begging you for money,'" Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters on Capitol Hill, also quoting the director of the Office of Management and Budget as saying that "We can't rob other accounts any longer.'"
Graham said the request from the administration for an extra $175 billion would cover four years of immigration-related security enforcement.
The Senate passed a budget resolution last week with that figure, an early step in the reconciliation process, which would allow Republicans to pass much of Trump's legislative agenda with only GOP votes.
But first, congressional Republicans have to get on the same page. House Republicans passed a competing budget resolution on Tuesday. Reconciliation is only possible if both chambers ultimately get on board with the same resolution.
Copyright 2025 NPR
