Like dominoes, the surge in Chicago ICE operations is causing other federal law enforcement agencies here to dance around their own cases, including organized crime and public corruption.
Federal agents who usually investigate those crimes at FBI, ATF, DEA and elsewhere are now being poached by ICE to fulfil an aggressive and growing mission: the tracking and detainment of undocumented immigrants, only some of whom are criminals.
With dragnets in place, dawn-to-dusk raids and mounting arrests of allegedly undocumented residents, ICE has had to draw on partner federal agencies just to make it all happen.
As our NBC 5 Investigates team reported yesterday yesterday, more than 25,000 officers from numerous federal law enforcement agencies have been reassigned to ICE for immigration case duty according to new Cato Institute data.
At Chicago FBI headquarters, ICE has drawn agents from every squad including organized crime and public corruption, according to several law enforcement sources.
“We have a unique public corruption problem in Chicago. We need the resources there,” said Ron Safer a former top assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago. “We have terrorist organizations. We need the anti-terrorism task force here. We’re not going to divert those resources to a political cause that does not have public safety ramifications.”
The former Chicago federal prosecutor says immigration cases are surging at the expense of other criminal investigations and come at a time when President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is already overhauling the FBI and other agencies, eliminating some traditional targets including public corruption and organized crime.
In New York for example, the storied counter-mafia team that finally took down John “Teflon Don” Gotti has been eliminated altogether according to gangland investigators, prompting one underworld expert to say it’s like “Christmas in September for the mob.”
“It is horrific that we are taking our eye off gangs, we’re taking our eye off drug traffickers, we’re taking our eye off people who prey on the elderly in terms of fraud,” said Safer, who toiled in the trenches at the U.S. Attorney’s office from 1989-99, eventually becoming chief of the criminal division. “We’re arresting undocumented workers who, for the most part-not everybody-but for the most part, are working. That’s why they go to workplaces to round these people up. They’re working, they’re paying Social Security tax, they’re buying goods and services. They’re supporting their families.”
Our NBC 5 Investigates team has asked FBI officials here for the number of agents who were required to redeploy to ICE and immigration arrests. We haven’t received a reply and there has been no information on how the bureau is managing to handle its own cases and ongoing investigations because some FBI offices are said to be struggling.
A former high-ranking official at FBI Chicago tells us that his “heart is broken” and he’s “enraged at what is happening to the FBI now on all fronts” right now.
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