Trump Turned DHS Into a “Department of Deportation”: Report

President Donald Trump’s obsessive focus on deporting immigrants has led to extreme changes at the Department of Homeland Security and undermined efforts to combat child exploitation and sex trafficking, a new report found.

According to The New York Times, the department has been forced to shift its priorities and sideline other important law enforcement activities to make way for the president’s agenda.

Agents investigating sexual crimes against children have been temporarily reassigned, a national security probe into the Iranian black market slowed and lost momentum, and agents working on sex trafficking issues have been forced to pause their work in order to support the Trump administration’s deportation goals. Even the Coast Guard has been pulled in to aid the deportation work, the Times reported.

The new data that the report is based on comes from previously unseen internal DHS documents, and interviews with more than 60 officials.

People inside the agency spoke of being “berated” by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller for not arresting enough people. Yet the Trump administration’s extensive focus on immigration hasn’t played out the way they might have imagined. Less than 40 percent of people ICE arrests carry criminal convictions, the report says.

The Trump administration’s pressure campaign extended to all parts of the agency.

As of August, there are currently more than 60,000 people being detained by DHS, and the Trump administration has shown no signs of pulling back anytime soon.

While so many government agencies have been gutted, depriving Americans of much needed aid and assistance, DHS has received a hefty funding boost. ICE is expected to grow its staff by 66 percent over the next few years.

Hany Farid, a computer scientist who worked on software that detects child sexual abuse materials and aids law enforcement, told Times reporters that it was heartbreaking. “You can’t say you care about kids when you’re diverting actual resources that are protecting children,” he said.