Reacting to a new report that the FBI under Director Kash Patel is shifting a massive amount of manpower to helping the Department of Homeland Security track down undocumented immigrants, two former bureau officials claimed there is now an increased risk of a terrorist attack in the US.
According to a report that was issued by Sen. Mark Warner (R-VA), who sits on the Senate Intelligence committee, which he shared with the Guardian, an estimated 45 percent of FBI agents in the country’s 25 largest field offices are now working on immigrant roundups, and 23 percent of the nearly 13,000 total agents are assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
After the Guardian's Sam Levin shared those numbers with former FBI official Kenneth Gray, who now teaches in the University of New Haven’s criminal justice department, the FBI veteran expressed alarm that important investigations that the FBI is normally tasked with are unmanned and therefore posing a threat to national safety.
The 24-year veteran of the agency explained, “The bureau can withstand a temporary change in its priorities, but in the long-term, if agents are continuing to work immigration matters, as opposed to counterterrorism, foreign counterintelligence or cybercrimes, that may end up biting us big time.”
He added, “The next 9/11 might happen if agents who were working on counter-terrorism have been diverted.”
According to the Guardian report, “Mike German, a former FBI agent and civil liberties advocate, said it was unprecedented for the bureau to redirect this many agents to a mission that is not part of the FBI’s mandate.”
German, now an FBI whistleblower, also said there may be an ulterior motive to the shift of manpower.
“Part of the reason FBI leadership would be doing this at such scale is to separate those two – to identify who are the loyalists and who are potential impediments to the administration’s goals,” he explained.
He also added that the agents being reassigned are not trained for their current mission under the Donald Trump administration.
“Just jumping in an SUV with a bunch of armed men and rolling around the streets until you see someone running away is inherently a more dangerous type of activity they are not very well trained for,” he suggested.
The Guardian’s Levin added, “There has been extensive documentation of the violent and indiscriminate nature of the Ice raids, which have often been carried out by masked men and have at times led to the detention of US citizens, and adding FBI personnel to the mix could exacerbate the chaos and potential for abuses, the former agent said.”
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