{"id":275764,"date":"2026-04-19T16:48:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T16:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/275764\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T16:48:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T16:48:25","slug":"how-the-trump-administration-diverted-resources-to-support-mass-deportations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/275764\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Trump administration diverted resources to support mass deportations"},"content":{"rendered":"

State Department funds for countering foreign election interference. Senior staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Department of Homeland Security budget for an office focused on weapons of mass destruction. Training programs for\u00a0prison guards<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Those are just some of the federal resources that the Trump administration has redirected to support the president\u2019s\u00a0mass deportation agenda<\/a>\u00a0without congressional input.<\/p>\n

NOTUS identified at least six programs or accounts, largely related to national security, across the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State where spending, staff or other resources were directed toward immigration and deportation operations, deviating from Congress\u2019 original intention.<\/p>\n

These are funds and resources being used on top of the $75 billion boost in funding that Republicans included for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in their budget reconciliation bill last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs somebody who joined DHS in 2005, shortly after it was formed, this feels like the biggest reorienting of federal resources toward a single end since 9\/11,\u201d said Theresa Brown, a former DHS official in the Obama and Bush administrations. \u201cWe\u2019re not creating a new department, but we are telling the entire federal government: This is now your No. 1 mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u00a0has said it views<\/a>\u00a0immigration enforcement as a whole-of-government operation. Previously unreported internal federal agency documents and footnotes in the Office of Management and Budget\u2019s apportionments database provide a new window into which federal resources have been redirected to make that happen.<\/p>\n

They also renew questions about Congress\u2019 flagging power of the purse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been very concerned about this diversion of funds for these purposes,\u201d Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who serves on the Senate\u2019s appropriations committee and its DHS subcommittee, told NOTUS.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seemed that monies were finding their way from other agency accounts into ICE. So I don\u2019t think the guardrails are strong enough or high enough,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

DHS, DOJ and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

At FEMA, senior staff typically in charge of the nation\u2019s disaster response coordinated a recruitment program for Department of Defense employees to volunteer for southern border assignments, according to internal agency information obtained by NOTUS.<\/p>\n

FEMA also hosted recruitment activities for DOD officials, and agency staff was paid overtime to work on the coordination effort, according to information reviewed by NOTUS.<\/p>\n

DOJ and DHS share a major training facility for most of their officers. After DHS launched a massive immigration officer recruitment campaign in the summer of 2025, the DOJ found that its training classes for the Bureau of Prisons and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives staff were being canceled so DHS could schedule more for its new immigration hires, according to a\u00a0September DOJ memo to the White House.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Nearly all of the classes for DOJ officials were canceled in the final few months of 2025. The DOJ anticipated that classes in 2026 would continue to be constrained by the DHS hiring surge, especially the more advanced training needed for Bureau of Prisons officials, according to the memo.<\/p>\n

The canceled classes could make it harder for the DOJ to retain staff and new recruits, Brown said, especially because many DOJ officials cannot do their full jobs in the field until they have completed their training.<\/p>\n

Within DHS itself, NOTUS found that at least twice in 2025, the agency redirected money to ICE that was originally intended for the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office: one\u00a0lump of money for training<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0another for\u00a0<\/a>a national biosurveillance center. In both cases, the funding was transferred to \u201csupport the operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s Custody Operations and Homeland Security Investigations,\u201d according to the OMB\u2019s apportionments database.<\/p>\n

The money for the transfers came from funds Congress appropriated for the 2025 fiscal year, according to OMB\u2019s database.<\/p>\n

And at the State Department, when the Trump administration restructured and shrank the agency, it also redirected some of its dollars for immigration purposes.<\/p>\n

In one case, the State Department shuttered the office tasked with combatting efforts by foreign governments to manipulate U.S. citizens and spread propaganda and misinformation. About $25 million of that office\u2019s funds were repurposed for administration priorities that included \u201cmigration-related messaging,\u201d according to State\u2019s spending plan outlined last June and\u00a0made public on the OMB website\u00a0<\/a>in March.<\/p>\n

In another, State paid $4.76 million out of an account intended to help address crime problems in Central America. The payment went to\u00a0the government of El Salvador<\/a>\u00a0in exchange for them placing more than 200 people deported from the United States into El Salvador\u2019s notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, the mega-prison commonly known as CECOT,\u00a0according to internal agency documents<\/a>\u00a0released during litigation with Democracy Forward relating to Freedom of Information Act requests.<\/p>\n

The State Department recommended skipping the normal requirement that Congress be notified that the payment was going to be made, according to an internal memo reviewed by NOTUS.<\/p>\n

In the memo, a State Department official admitted that it was \u201crare\u201d to see the State Department skip Congressional notification requirements \u201cdue to concerns about Congressional relations and future funding.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump\u00a0signed an executive order<\/a>\u00a0that explicitly directed all federal agencies to focus their resources and efforts on immigration and deportation.<\/p>\n

Congress often leaves room for change in its appropriations bills, giving presidents the ability to shift some money and staff as needed. But this time, the White House\u00a0left Congress largely in the dark<\/a>\u00a0about its exact reprioritization of resources in response to the executive order. Traditionally, the executive branch has an open line of communication with Congress when it needs to move resources, and an understanding that agencies will otherwise act in the spirit of Congress\u2019 instructions.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving that flexibility, historically, has been a useful thing,\u201d said Christie Wentworth, senior policy counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. \u201cWhen you have comity between the branches and they\u2019re talking to each other, there is this understanding that the agencies know what Congress wants.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lack of communication has left many in Congress frustrated with changes they still don\u2019t know the full extent of.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes with administrations that tend to play by the rules, they seek congressional approval before they make transfers. But this is an administration that doesn\u2019t play by the rules,\u201d Van Hollen said.<\/p>\n

In some cases, the Trump administration\u2019s redirection was not a transfer, but instead an expansion of responsibility. Take the case of Homeland Security Investigations, a division of DHS that traditionally investigated terrorists and global criminal networks.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s January 2025 executive order declared that HSI\u2019s \u201cprimary mission\u201d was going to become the enforcement of immigration laws. HSI officials have since been spotted working alongside Border Patrol and ICE during the administration\u2019s immigration \u201csurges\u201d into places like Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

A Democratic staffer familiar with HSI told NOTUS that DHS has provided very little information about its actions in this area and in others areas where resources are being repurposed for immigration efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re concerned that they\u2019ve been taken away from their human trafficking and drug smuggling investigations,\u201d said the staffer, who asked for anonymity to discuss private concerns.<\/p>\n

Because investigations regarding national security issues can take years, Brown warned that moving investigative experts at HSI to immigration enforcement could result in a loss of leads, witnesses and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t necessarily know what we\u2019ve lost there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

On a larger scale, the changes speak to a diminished Congress under the second Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s approach to the federal government has put a \u201cburden on Congress to think about every potential contingency and make sure that they\u2019re taking away that discretion for executive branch agencies,\u201d Wentworth said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimply because they are unwilling to actually communicate with and respond to the directive that Congress has put into law,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS <\/a>\u2014 a publication from the nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute \u2014 and NEWSWELL<\/a>, home of Times of San Diego<\/a>, Santa Barbara News-Press<\/a> and Stocktonia<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"State Department funds for countering foreign election interference. Senior staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Department…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[33259,14,76135,8406,74,76,75,1695],"class_list":["post-275764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-deportations","tag-immigration","tag-mass-deportations","tag-notus","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-trump-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}