Goldman, Warren, Blumenthal Lead 27 Members of Congress in Calling for Investigation into Trump Administration’s Retreat from White-Collar Crime Enforcement
Since January 2025, Trump Administration Has Diverted 25,000 Federal Agents from White-Collar Crime Investigations to Trump’s Cruel and Anti-American Immigration Crackdown.
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Representative Dan Goldman (D-NY-10) and U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) led 27 lawmakers in writing to the Inspectors General for the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Postal Service (USPS), and the Office of Tax Administration (TIGTA), asking the watchdogs to investigate the impact of the Trump administration’s diversion of law enforcement resources away from white collar and corporate crime and in favor of immigration enforcement.
“Trump is letting white collar criminals run rampant without consequences so he can shift law enforcement to violently attack immigrants, the overwhelming majority of whom have no criminal record,” said Rep. Goldman. “Having 25,000 fewer law enforcement personnel investigating and prosecuting white collar crime enables fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, and other crimes that hurt the American people. Federal Inspectors General must conduct a thorough investigation of the impact of these diversions.”
Since January 2025, the Trump administration has reportedly diverted over 25,000 law enforcement personnel to immigration enforcement. Many of those agents had been dedicated to combating white-collar crimes—including fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, and more.
Those diversions include:
More than 1,700 IRS Criminal Investigation employees;
Around 300 State Department Diplomatic Security Service agents;
More than 90 percent of the Homeland Security Investigations workforce;
Dozens of career prosecutors from DOJ’s Public Integrity Section and National Security Division; and
Even members of the US Postal Inspection Service.
Several agencies are experiencing the consequences of these diversions. For example, the mass reassignment of HSI agents to immigration removal operations means that critical threats could go uninvestigated. Diverting State Department resources to ICE weakens cross-border investigations into corruption, fraud, and international financial crimes. The diversion of FBI and DOJ personnel from white-collar units has caused delays and the deprioritization of complex financial crime cases such as public corruption, corporate fraud, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) prosecutions.
The lawmakers asked the IGs to provide the information below as a part of their investigation:
A breakdown of how many law enforcement personnel have been reassigned from each agency for immigration enforcement;
A breakdown of how many white-collar crimes cases (including but not limited to financial fraud, corruption, FCPA, and money-laundering cases) have been opened, closed, or suspended since the start of the second Trump administration;
Any internal assessments conducted by agencies to determine the impacts of diverting law enforcement resources; and
An accounting of complaints or whistleblower disclosures received about these diversions;
A list of the safeguards that exist to ensure each agency still meets its statutory white-collar criminal investigative obligations despite these diversions.
The letter was signed by Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Andy Kim (D-NJ), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) and Representatives Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ), Wesley Bell (D-MO), Lou Correa (D-CA), Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), John Garamendi (D-AC), Henry Johnson (D-GA), Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Ted Lieu (D-CA), Dave Min (D-CA), Seth Moulton (D-MA), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Paul Tonko (D-NY).
The full text of the letter is available here or below:
Dear Inspectors General Berthiaume, Cuffari, Hill, Baker, and Hull:
We write to express our deep concern about the diversion of critical federal law enforcement personnel and resources away from investigating and prosecuting white-collar crime and toward advancing President Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda. We ask that your office conduct an evaluation of the scope of this diversion and its impact.
When white-collar criminal enforcement is neglected, the American public pays the price. Ordinary people are left more vulnerable to fraud schemes, market manipulation, predatory financial practices, and corruption that threaten their savings, retirement accounts, and financial security — while the wealthiest bend the rules and exploit a weakened enforcement system that no longer holds them accountable.
The failure to enforce the law against corporate criminals has been a hallmark of the Trump Administration. Time and again, President Trump and his administration have let convicted corporate criminals off the hook by wiping out fines and penalties, eliminating efforts to enforce consumer and banking laws, and pardoning fraudsters and con-men under the flimsiest of pretenses. According to one estimate, President Trump’s pardons have wiped away “approximately $1.3 billion in restitution and fines owed to [crime victims] and American taxpayers.”
Exacerbating this lack of accountability, since January 2025, the Trump Administration has diverted over 25,000 federal law enforcement personnel to immigration enforcement.6 Many of those agents had been dedicated to combatting white-collar crimes — including fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, and more.
According to reports, thousands of agents from teams responsible for white-collar criminal investigations at the Department of Justice (DOJ), Treasury Department, State Department, and more have been reassigned to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), primarily to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to execute the President’s civil immigration dragnet. For example:
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI): Nearly one-quarter of FBI agents nationwide — and up to 40 percent in the largest field offices — have been reassigned to support ICE enforcement operations. These agents, once dedicated to public corruption, financial fraud, cybercrime, and complex corporate investigations, are now serving on civil immigration details and ICE facility protection assignments.
Internal Revenue Service (IRS): More than 1,700 IRS Criminal Investigation employees have been reassigned to ICE as of September 2025, compared to just 250 employees as of June 2025. In April 2025, the IRS and DHS formalized a data-sharing Memorandum of Understanding granting ICE access to certain taxpayer return information — including names, addresses, and tax years — to support immigration enforcement, a potentially unlawful departure from the longstanding IRS confidentiality policy, and potentially further drawing from IRS resources.
State Department Diplomatic Security Service (DSS): DSS agents traditionally focus on protecting U.S. diplomatic missions, investigating passport and visa fraud, coordinating sensitive international investigations, and investigating crimes involving foreign missions and consular services. The CATO Institute reported that around 300 DSS agents have now been detailed to ICE operations.
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI): HSI has historically led criminal investigations into international money laundering, financial fraud, cyber-enabled financial crimes, and intellectual property theft. But now HSI has reassigned a whopping 90 percent of its workforce to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, according to CATO’s estimates.
DOJ Public Integrity Section (PIN) & National Security Division (NSD): PIN oversees the investigation and prosecution of public corruption cases involving elected officials, judges, and other government employees. Yet under President Trump, the Section has been gutted — shrinking from 36 career prosecutors to just two16 — and the head of PIN was reassigned to the DOJ’s new “Office of Sanctuary Cities Enforcement” task force. Similarly, two veteran prosecutors in NSD, responsible for investigating sanctions violations and other offenses, were also reassigned to the sanctuary cities task force. Many lawyers placed on the sanctuary cities team were sidelined, given only menial tasks and, with little else to do, “completed jigsaw puzzles and streamed television shows” after being removed from their jobs investigating serious white-collar crimes and other offenses.
US Postal Inspection Service (USPIS): USPIS, the law enforcement arm of the Postal Service, normally investigates mail fraud and other crimes. But this year, some Postal Service agents have assisted ICE in locating individuals for immigration enforcement.
Taken together, these moves represent a massive diversion of specialized law-enforcement talent away from criminal financial investigations and prosecutions and toward civil immigration enforcement.
As a result of these diversions, white-collar investigative teams are understaffed, under- resourced, and in some cases gutted. Complex, multi-year investigations into white-collar crimes depend on continuity of staff and specialized expertise. By reassigning agents who worked on white-collar crime and corruption cases to immigration, critical investigations into fraud, corruption, and cyber-financial crimes have been sidelined or shelved. For example, one DOJ investigation into a financial services firm has reportedly stalled in part because investigators were “pulled into immigration matters,” while the FBI’s white-collar crime squad in Houston was reportedly “decimated in 2025 by orders to put dozens of their agents onto immigration enforcement.” Already, we are seeing how other diversions of agents at DOJ appear to have resulted in a decline in criminal referrals for prosecution of non-immigration offenses.
Several agencies are already experiencing the consequences of these diversions. For example, the mass reassignment of HSI agents to immigration removal operations means that “critical threats could go uninvestigated,” including “Dark Web financial schemes, Iranian and Chinese nuclear traffickers, Russian organized crime, [and] trade fraud.” Likewise, diverting State Department resources to ICE weakens cross-border investigations into corruption, fraud, and international financial crimes. At the same time, the diversion of FBI and DOJ personnel from white-collar units has caused delays and the deprioritization of complex financial crime cases such as public corruption, corporate fraud, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) prosecutions — undermining the federal government’s ability to hold powerful actors accountable.
Moreover, at the IRS, the diversion of agents inflicts a double harm: it not only allows wealthy tax evaders and criminal enterprises to escape accountability but also deprives the federal government of the revenue needed to sustain broader law-enforcement operations. The IRS’s Criminal Investigation team is widely regarded as one of the most cost-effective units in federal law enforcement;28 last year, on a budget of less than $800 million, that unit recovered over $9 billion in fraudulent proceeds.29 But now, more than 1,700 IRS Criminal Investigation agents and staff have been detailed to ICE operations, severely undermining the agency’s ability to investigate tax evasion, offshore accounts, cryptocurrency fraud, and money laundering. That means less revenue to fund the federal government’s enforcement functions and a greater risk that honest taxpayers will shoulder the burden left by tax evaders. In practice, these diversions also undermine deterrence: when white-collar criminals believe that federal enforcement units lack the resources or continuity to pursue long-term cases, they may become more emboldened to take risks that endanger markets, taxpayers, and public institutions.
The safety of American families and the integrity of our financial system depend on restoring law enforcement’s capacity to investigate and prosecute white-collar crime rather than simply turning the federal government into an immigration enforcement machine. In order to carry out our legislative responsibilities regarding enforcement of the nation’s criminal laws, we ask that your offices conduct an evaluation of these diversions. This evaluation should include answers to the following questions:
1. How many law enforcement personnel at your agency have been reassigned to ICE or other parts of DHS since January 20, 2025? Please provide a breakdown by bureau, division, field office, and duration of the reassignment.
2. Excluding any work done since January 2025 on immigration matters, how many white- collar crime cases (including but not limited to financial fraud, corruption, FCPA, and money-laundering cases) have been opened since January 20, 2025? How many have been closed or suspended? How many have been charged?
Please describe what types of white-collar crime cases have been charged, opened, closed, or suspended.
Please provide the number of white-collar crime cases charged, opened, closed, or suspended in FY 2023 and FY 2024 as points of reference.
How many white-collar crime cases have been closed, delayed, or suspended due to personnel shortages, following diversions of personnel from the relevant agency to immigration-related functions?
How many white-collar crime cases have been closed, delayed, or suspended due to other resource shortages, following resource diversions from the relevant agency to immigration-related functions?
3. For Offices of Inspectors General other than the DOJ OIG: excluding any work done since January 2025 on immigration matters, please provide the number of prosecution recommendations your agency made to the DOJ, the number of investigations closed without a referral for prosecution, the information or indictments DOJ filed, and the number of defendants sentenced, in or after FY 2025 compared to FY 2023 and FY 2024.
4. What internal assessments has your agency conducted to evaluate the impacts of diversion of law enforcement resources? Has your agency taken, or does it plan to take, action consistent with the findings of these assessments?
5, Has your office received complaints or whistleblower disclosures about these diversions? If so, how many, and what issues were raised?
6. What safeguards exist to ensure that your agency continues to meet its statutory white- collar crime obligations despite these diversions?
Thank you for your attention to this critical matter.
Sincerely,
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