A former senior CIA officer says the Trump administration is taking a dangerous risk by moving federal law enforcement off counterterrorism and onto immigration. He also warned that it could end in a "mass casualty event."
Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA senior operations officer, posted the warning on X early on Sunday. He was responding to a ProPublica investigation into how the Justice Department has shifted its priorities.
ProPublica reported that the DOJ dropped 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of Trump's second term, including hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime and drugs. Over the same period, the department prosecuted 32,000 new immigration cases, according to the outlet.
Polymeropoulos said people in counterterrorism are alarmed by those numbers.
"The concern of my CT [Counter Terrorism] world is just this. There are finite resources. CT is taking a back burner. It's simple math," he wrote.
"All fun and games, until a mass casualty event happens," he added. "The admin is playing a very dangerous game short changing the FBI's standing CT requirements."
Critics have warned about the same thing throughout Trump's second term, as the administration moved federal agents and prosecutors to immigration enforcement. Agents from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies have been assigned to help with Trump's deportation push.
Immigration enforcement itself looked shaky this weekend. Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin reported that ICE officers were told to stop arresting immigrants without criminal records. Hours later, the administration called the order a "miscommunication" and reversed it.
Polymeropoulos served 26 years at the CIA before retiring in 2019. He has been an outspoken Trump critic since leaving the agency.
