WASHINGTON (AP) — When the FBI arrested an accused leader of the MS-13 gang, Kash Patel was there to announce the case, trumpeting it as a step toward returning “our communities to safety.”
Weeks later, when the Justice Department announced the seizure of $510 million in illegal narcotics bound for the U.S, the FBI director joined other law enforcement leaders in front of a Coast Guard ship in Florida and stacks of intercepted drugs to highlight the haul.
His presence was meant to signal the premium the FBI is placing on combating violent crime, drug trafficking and illegal immigration, concerns that have leapfrogged up the agenda in what amounts to a rethinking of priorities and mission at a time when the country is also confronting increasingly sophisticated national security threats.
A revised FBI priority list on its website places “Crush Violent Crime” at the top, bringing the bureau into alignment with the vision of President Donald Trump, who has made a crackdown on illegal immigration, cartels and transnational gangs a cornerstone of his administration.
The FBI said in a statement that its commitment to investigating international and domestic terrorism has not changed. That threat was laid bare over the past month by a spate of violent acts, most recently a Molotov cocktail attack on a Colorado crowd by an Egyptian man who authorities say overstayed his visa and yelled “Free Palestine.”
The bureau said it continuously assesses threats and “allocates resources and personnel in alignment with that analysis.”
Signs of restructuring abound. The Justice Department has disbanded an FBI-led task force on foreign influence and the bureau has moved to dissolve a key public corruption squad in its Washington field office.
Some former officials are concerned the stepped-up focus on violent crime and immigration, areas already core to the mission of other agencies, risks deflecting attention from some of the complicated criminal and national security threats for which the bureau has long borne primary if not exclusive responsibility for investigating.
“If you’re looking down five feet in front of you, looking for gang members and I would say lower-level criminals, you’re going to miss some of the more sophisticated strategic issues that may be already present or emerging,” said Chris Piehota, a retired senior FBI official.
A greater focus on immigration
Immigration enforcement in particular is a new focus for the FBI. Since Trump’s inauguration, the FBI has assumed greater responsibility for that work, saying it’s made over 10,000 immigration-related arrests. Patel has highlighted the arrests on social media, doubling down on the administration’s promise to prioritize immigration enforcement.
Agents have been dispatched to visit migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without parents in what officials say is an effort to ensure their safety. Field offices have been directed to commit manpower to immigration enforcement and the Justice Department has instructed the FBI to review files for information about those illegally in the U.S. and provide it to the Department of Homeland Security unless doing so would compromise an investigation.
There’s precedent for the FBI to rearrange priorities to meet evolving threats, though for the past two decades countering terrorism has remained a constant atop the agenda.
Then-Director Robert Mueller transformed the FBI after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks into a national security, intelligence-gathering agency. Fighting violent crime was near the bottom, above only supporting law enforcement partners and technology upgrades.
A mandate to ‘crush violent crime’
The FBI’s new list of priorities places “Crush Violent Crime” as a top pillar alongside “Defend the Homeland,” though FBI leaders stress that counterterrorism remains the bureau’s principal mandate.
Patel’s direct predecessor, Christopher Wray, often said he was hard-pressed to think of a time when the FBI was facing so many elevated threats at once. At the time of his departure last January, the FBI was grappling with elevated terrorism concerns; Iranian assassination plots on U.S. soil; Chinese spying and hacking of Americans’ cell phones; ransomware attacks against hospitals; and Russian influence operations aimed at sowing disinformation.
Testifying before lawmakers last month, Patel noted the surge in terrorism threats following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas and a Chinese espionage threat he said had yielded investigations in each of the bureau’s offices. But the accomplishments he dwelled on first concerned efforts to “take dangerous criminals off our streets,” including the arrests of three suspects on the “Ten Most Wanted” list, and large drug seizures.
A new focus for the agency
Rounding out the priority list are two newcomers: “Rebuild Public Trust” and “Fierce Organizational Accountability.”
Those reflect claims amplified by Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, that the bureau had become politicized through its years of investigations of Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago home was searched by agents for classified documents in 2022. Close allies of Trump, both men have committed to disclose files from past investigations, including into Russian election interference and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, that have fueled grievances against the bureau.
They’ve also pledged to examine matters that have captivated attention in conservative circles, like the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade. Employees have spent hours poring over documents from the sex trafficking case against financier Jeffrey Epstein, a favorite subject of conspiracy theorists, to prepare them for release.
James Gagliano, a retired FBI supervisor, said he was heartened by an enhanced violent crime focus so long as other initiatives weren’t abandoned.
“Mission priorities change,” Gagliano said. “The threat matrix changes. You’ve got to constantly get out in front of that.”
The Trump administration has touted several terrorism successes but it’s also employing a broad definition of what it believes constitutes terrorism.
FBI and Justice Department officials see the fight against transnational gangs as part of their counterterrorism mandate, taking advantage of the administration’s designation of the violent street gangs MS-13 and Tren de Aragua as foreign terrorist organizations to bring terrorism-related charges against defendants, including a Venezuelan man suspected of being a high-ranking TdA member.
One national security concern Patel has preached continuity on in public is the threat from China, which he said in a recent Fox News interview keeps him up at night. Wray often called China the gravest long-term threat to national security. When he stepped aside in January the FBI was contending with an espionage operation that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans.
There are signs of a broader national security realignment.
A task force tracking foreign influence was disbanded and the Justice Department has scaled back criminal enforcement of a statute requiring registration of U.S. lobbying on behalf of foreign entities.
