How Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Is Making Americans Less Safe

 

From: National Security Action
To: Interested Parties
Date: December 18, 2025
Re: How Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Is Making Americans Less Safe

Summary: 

President Donald Trump has pursued an aggressive deportation-first agenda built on indiscriminate immigration raids across the country. This excessive approach requires enormous manpower – forcing the administration to divert criminal investigators and other law enforcement personnel away from core missions like combatting terrorism, drug trafficking, firearms offenses, and human trafficking. 

In short, all other federal public safety efforts now take a back seat to arresting and detaining immigrants – including those who came to the United States legally, have served in the U.S. military, have lived in the U.S. since childhood, and who are married to American citizens. It’s clear that Trump’s extremist anti-immigration agenda is making Americans less safe. Here’s how:

Highlighting Trump’s Failed Approach:

Trump’s extremist immigration policy has diverted tens of thousands of criminal law enforcement personnel into immigration enforcement. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is redirecting criminal law enforcement agents away from their investigations and enforcement responsibilities to conduct civil immigration enforcement operations on a massive scale.

  • 42,153 total personnel were diverted in August to help support ICE operations, including 28,390 from federal law enforcement agencies. 

  • That amounts to roughly 20% of US marshals, 20% of FBI agents, half of DEA agents, and over two-thirds of the ATF. Additionally, 90% of Homeland Security Investigations staff have been diverted to support enforcement and removal operations. 

  • A quarter of FBI agents have been pulled from duties related to cybercrimes, drug trafficking, terrorism, counterintelligence and more.

  • That’s in addition to thousands of state and local police officers who have been trained to act as ICE agents rather than supporting local communities. 

  • According to reports, just one in five people working in the mass deportation efforts are actually ICE officers. The rest are on loan from other agencies. 

Trump’s actions have serious public safety consequences. As a result of Trump’s actions, serious criminals are likely walking free. 

  • Investigations and arrests of dangerous criminals have dropped dramatically since Trump expanded immigration enforcement. 

    • Narcotics arrests fell by roughly 11%. 

    • The number of weapons seized fell dramatically, declining from nearly 41,400 to fewer than 11,200 — a 73% drop.

    • The number of indictments for child exploitation crimes fell 28%. 

    • H.S.I. agents identified or rescued roughly 300 fewer child victims, a 17% drop.

    • 24% fewer people this year have been charged with money laundering, a charge often used against suspected drug traffickers.

  • Local law enforcement authorities are now receiving far fewer intelligence reports from DHS agents charged with investigating terrorism, active shooter incidents and other threats across government. One official said the decline in information sharing has amounted to “chipping away at everything that’s been built since Sept. 11.”

  • Homeland security investigators worked approximately 33% fewer hours on child exploitation cases from February through April compared to their average in prior years.

  • A national security probe into the black market for Iranian oil sold to finance terrorism has been slowed down for months because of the shift to immigration work, allowing tanker ships and money to disappear.

  • The federal government’s main law enforcement training academy has suspended many of its programs for nonimmigration agents for the rest of the year, aiming to make room for the thousands of new deportation officers being hired by ICE. That has delayed classes for new recruits and experienced officers from other agencies. 

Trump’s Immigration Strategy Isn’t Prioritizing Criminals. Americans support deporting violent criminals who are guilty of murder and other serious crimes. But since entering office, Trump’s approach hasn’t targeted “the worst of the worst” – instead focusing his efforts on laborers, families, and even veterans who have been living peacefully in the United States for years, or even decades. 

  • ICE’s own data suggests that the majority of immigrants in detention have never been found guilty of any crime – and less than 10% of all detainees have been convicted of violent crimes that Trump promised to crack down on.

Polling:

Public opinion toward the Trump Administration’s deportation policies has grown increasingly negative. 53% of Americans now say that the Administration is doing “too much” to deport migrants, up from 44% in March 2025. 36% of Americans “strongly disapprove” of the Administration’s agenda overall. Concern is also rising within the Republican party: 20% of conservatives believe that the Trump Administration is handling deportations incorrectly, a seven point increase since March.

Talking Points:

  • Donald Trump’s extremist, deportation-at-all-costs agenda is diverting law enforcement resources from real public safety threats and making Americans less safe.

  • The Administration has made a deliberate choice to prioritize deportation numbers over targeting violent criminals by reassigning tens of thousands of personnel – including hardworking agents from the FBI, DEA, and ATF.

  • The consequences are clear and predictable: when you pull law enforcement officers off of cases targeting terrorism, drug trafficking, gun crimes, and child exploitation cases so they can enforce immigration policy, public safety suffers.

  • We’re seeing the consequences of Trump’s actions already: fewer drug arrests, a dramatic decline in firearm seizures, and fewer indictments of human traffickers. These are not abstract tradeoffs. Because of Trump’s actions, more violent criminals are likely to stay on the streets.

  • Trump promised to focus on the “worst of the worst.” Instead, his administration has built a broad deportation dragnet that increasingly sweeps up many with no criminal history at all. 

  • The bottom line is that you cannot make America safer by hollowing out the very agencies responsible for public safety. Unfortunately, it’s the American people and our communities who will pay the price.

Published: December 2025