From Courtrooms to Crossings: Trump Admin Trades Drug War for Deportation Drive
Trump Administration: According to a Reuters analysis of over 2 million federal court records, the Trump administration’s directive to enforcement agencies to concentrate on deporting immigrants caused the number of persons charged with violating federal drug laws to fall to the lowest level in decades this year.
According to court statistics, the number of drug-related prosecutions has decreased by almost 1,200 instances so far this year, or 10% less than during the same time in 2024. This is the slowest pace since at least the late 1990s. For the kinds of conspiracy and money-laundering prosecutions that are often used to target high-level traffickers, the reversal was more pronounced. According to Reuters’ study, the number of persons charged with money-laundering decreased by 24 percent.
U.S. President Donald Trump began the most extensive reform of American law enforcement since the September 11, 2001 attacks shortly after he took office in January. He directed hundreds of federal officers to concentrate on stopping what he called an illegal immigration “invasion.”
According to interviews and court documents, the change has resulted in a slowdown from coast to coast in the kinds of investigations and prosecutions that the government had long considered essential to combating criminal networks, such as the drug cartels whose products killed over 80,000 people last year. Instead, agents have been concentrating on quick-hit immigration raids.
One senior Justice Department official involved in those investigations, who like others asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject, stated, “We’re seeing a reduced amount of time on long-term investigations so agents can go out in their raid gear and be seen supporting immigration raids.”
Four officials involved with the cases told Reuters that even high-priority investigations have stopped as a consequence of Trump’s pledges to enforce drug laws more strictly. A fentanyl investigation that he oversaw was at a halt, according to one prosecutor, since the agents in charge of it had been told to concentrate on deportations instead. Drug ring investigations have been postponed, according to another officer.
Abigail Jackson, a spokeswoman for the White House, “highly successful efforts at closing the border and removing dangerous criminal illegal aliens from our communities, along with prosecuting violent drug traffickers and targeting transnational cartels, means less illegal drugs are circulating in American communities.”
According to Justice Department spokesman Natalie Baldassarre, “focusing on the number of charges does not accurately reflect the great work our attorneys are doing to hold the most serious offenders accountable.” According to her, “our focus has been to eliminate transnational drug cartels, prosecute violent drug traffickers,” and assist with immigration enforcement. She also said that attempts to combat organized crime are long-term.
Drug prosecutions are at an all-time low.
Reuters collected the dockets of all federal court cases filed since 1998 that are publicly accessible via Westlaw, an online legal research service owned by Thomson Reuters, in order to assess the impact of law enforcement’s new marching orders. The number of cases filed between January 1 and September 15 was compared to the same time in prior years by Reuters.
In several instances, Reuters classified the allegations against individuals using artificial intelligence. The approach was shown to be 98% accurate when a random group of data was reviewed.
More than 15 law enforcement officers, both past and present, were interviewed by Reuters; almost all of them agreed to speak anonymously in order to disclose internal discussions or out of concern for reprisals. When taken as a whole, they provided the most complete view of Trump’s overhaul’s effects to date.
According to their testimonies, narcotics enforcement has stalled at almost every turn. Investigators have been less accessible to work on ongoing investigations and slower to create new ones. According to the sources, prosecutors have also redirected their attention to criminal immigration law infractions, which has left them with less time to concentrate on other cases.
There is no indication that the drug trade itself is slowing down, despite the fact that overdose fatalities in the US have been down since 2023, opens new tab, thanks in part to the widespread availability of the overdose antidote naloxone. Compared to previous year, the overall number of narcotics that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has confiscated this year has increased by almost 6%.
However, according to court records, the number of persons accused of bringing narcotics into the United States fell by almost 6% this year, to the lowest level in at least 25 years. About 15% fewer persons were charged with drug conspiracies.
The consequences of diverting so many agents have extended beyond drug use: this year, there was a roughly 5% decrease in prosecutions for breaking laws that prohibit criminals and others from possessing firearms or from using them in connection with drug-related offenses.
Since investigations started today may not make it to a courtroom for a year or more, the decline in gun cases is probably going to continue. The decision to sideline so many agents “is going to have a huge effect,” according to Jeff Cohen, a senior attorney at the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which enforces gun regulations, until his retirement in July.
A former administrator at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration who oversaw the agency’s transition to immigration enforcement said, “You cannot conduct thorough, multi-agency drug investigations if you’re running around doing this other stuff.”
The shift has been significant: according to court dockets, over half of those charged with federal offenses this year were charged with immigration infractions for the first time in decades. According to those figures, more than one in ten federal prosecutors—roughly 700 more—have been tasked with handling at least some immigration cases.
AGENTS DIVERTED, NEW PRIORITIES
The Trump administration has consistently pledged to police drug laws more strictly. Trump has often advocated for the death sentence for drug traffickers. Drug dealers are “violent criminals, and we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said as she opened a new tab this year.
Trump’s decision for the military to murder the crews of two suspected drug smuggling vessels off the coast of Venezuela this month intensified the administration’s efforts. Authorities would have halted the boats and accused the sailors of smuggling in the past. Venezuela disputes that they were involved in drug trafficking.
Meanwhile, before the end of the month, the administration has mandated that the DOJ’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, which deals with the most complicated organized crime investigations, be shut down.
Under former President Joe Biden, prosecutions for drug and gun offenses—which had been a top priority during Trump’s first term—began to decline as authorities said they were attempting to concentrate on more intricate investigations while also dealing with a lawyer shortage. However, with the DEA dedicating a quarter of its resources to immigration work once Trump took office, they hit new lows in almost every area this year.
Some law enforcement organizations saw a reduction in personnel due to buyouts and purges of Trump’s alleged political rivals. Next year, the administration plans to establish a new tab for federal law enforcement and seek more budget cutbacks.
According to two former DOJ officials, Trump’s Justice Department nominees informed officials almost immediately that immigration would take precedence over practically everything.
Agents who, before this year, had almost nothing to do with immigration now work daily to help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement teams apprehend individuals who may be deported.
According to former DEA and ATF officials, agents are becoming more and more irate that they are being taken away from their casework to investigate individuals who have not committed crimes, even though that work was originally concentrated on immigrants with lengthy criminal histories. According to the former officials, the majority of federal officers spend much of their time on the perimeter, managing transportation or preventing the public from entering since they are still not well-versed in immigration law.
“Cases are simply stagnating.”
His superiors have also requested pictures as part of such deployments. Managers believed the White House wanted photos of the agency’s emblem on jackets or body armor for social media, according to a former ATF agent who oversaw some of the immigration details. Numerous images of its agents taking part in immigration raids have also been shared by the organizations themselves.
The former ATF agent said that as a result, “a lot of good cases are just going stagnant for some photo-op bullshit.”
Questions about agents’ attention to immigration work were not answered by the DEA or ATF.
Agents have been drawn into ever more operations, which has increased those trade-offs. In an effort to tackle what he called a violent crime catastrophe in the nation’s capital, Trump ordered hundreds of federal officers to patrol Washington, D.C., this summer. Trump promised to send more agents to Memphis, Chicago, and maybe other large cities.
According to police reports, DEA and ATF agents began walking patrols with local police officers in Washington to look for common infractions like public alcohol use. According to a police complaint, DEA agents once took part in an operation that sent investigators undercover to purchase $25 worth of marijuana. While it is lawful to possess small quantities of marijuana in Washington, it is illegal to sell it. Two males were prosecuted by authorities in the city’s municipal court with minor narcotics charges.