Washington, DC — Last week, America’s Voice highlighted how this administration’s mass deportation obsession harms public safety — including diverting money and manpower away from public safety threats and disaster preparedness and toward mass deportation.
A new exclusive from Reuters, “Federal drug prosecutions fall to lowest level in decades as Trump shifts focus to deportations,” underscores the point, noting:
“The number of people charged with breaking federal drug laws dropped to the lowest level in decades this year after the Trump administration ordered enforcement agencies to focus on deporting immigrants, a Reuters review of nearly 2 million federal court records found. So far this year, about 10% fewer people have been prosecuted for drug violations compared to the same period of 2024, court records show, a drop of about 1,200 cases and the slowest rate since at least the late 1990s. The pullback was more dramatic for the types of conspiracy and money-laundering cases often used to pursue higher-level traffickers. The number of people charged with money-laundering dropped by 24%, according to Reuters’ analysis … Trump’s appointees at the Justice Department told officials from almost their first day that virtually everything would take a back seat to immigration, two former DOJ officials said. Now, agents whose jobs had almost nothing to do with immigration until this year, fan out every day to assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement teams in arresting people who can be deported.”
The new Reuters coverage underscores the points raised in AV’s fact sheet: “Trump’s Immigration Enforcement Dragnet Is Undermining Public Safety Across America” and on last week’s America’s Voice virtual press event featuring law enforcement experts and former federal officials.
In the Border Report newswire, Sandra Sanchez reported on the AV virtual event and analysis, “Report: Shifting thousands of federal agents to help ICE weakens US safety.”
The article quotes Joanna Kuebler, chief of programs for America’s Voice:
“From deploying the military and masked ICE agents into American communities — where they are operating without any shred of accountability — to diverting money and manpower away from active investigations and real threats and disaster preparedness efforts — and they’re moving all that to out-of-control immigration enforcement. This masked deportation crusade is harming public safety and it’s making all of us less safe.”
And read Anita Chabria’s Los Angeles Times column, “Federal authorities deserve to do their jobs safely. It starts with removing the masks,” noting:
“The anxiety brought on by an unaccountable and unknowable federal force, one that is expected to grow by thousands in coming years, is what is raising the temperature in American politics far more than the words from either side, though I am not here to argue that words don’t have power. Ending the fear that our justice system is devolving into secrecy and lawlessness will reduce tension, and the potential for violence. Want to protect officers — and our democracy? Ban masks.
‘Listen, I understand that it being a law enforcement officer is scary,’ former Capitol police officer Harry Dunn told me Wednesday during a press event for the immigration organization America’s Voice. Dunn was attacked, beaten and called racial slurs during the political violence on Jan. 6, 2021. ‘Nobody ever signed up to be harassed, to be targeted. That should never happen,’ he said. But Dunn said he’d never don a mask, because it harms that public trust, that mission to serve and protect. When officers cover their faces and demand to be nameless and faceless, ‘They are terrorizing … with something just as simple as a mask,’ he said.”
