Federal agents who usually hunt down child abusers are now cracking down on immigrants who live in the U.S. illegally, Reuters reported.

Homeland Security investigators who specialize in money laundering are raiding restaurants and other small businesses looking for immigrants who aren’t authorized to work and agents who pursue drug traffickers and tax fraud are being reassigned to enforce immigration law.

As U.S. President Donald Trump pledges to deport “millions and millions” of “criminal aliens,” thousands of federal law enforcement officials from multiple agencies are being enlisted to take on new work as immigration enforcers, pulling crime-fighting resources away on other areas — from drug trafficking and terrorism to sexual abuse and fraud, Reuters reported Sunday.

This account of Trump’s push to reorganize federal law enforcement – the most significant since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks – is based on interviews with more than 20 current and former federal agents, attorneys and other federal officials. 

Most had first-hand knowledge of the changes. Nearly all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss their work.

“I do not recall ever seeing this wide a spectrum of federal government resources all being turned toward immigration enforcement,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former Homeland Security official who has served in both Republican and Democratic administrations. 

“When you’re telling agencies to stop what you’ve been doing and do this now, whatever else they were doing takes a back seat.”

In response to questions from Reuters, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the U.S. government is “mobilizing federal and state law enforcement to find, arrest, and deport illegal aliens.” 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to respond to questions about its staffing. 

In a statement, the FBI said it is “protecting the U.S. from many threats.” 

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

The Trump administration has offered no comprehensive accounting of the revamp. But it echoes the aftermath of the 2001 attacks, when Congress created the Department of Homeland Security that pulled together 169,000 federal employees from other agencies and refocused the FBI on battling terrorism.

Trump’s hardline approach to deporting immigrants has intensified America’s already-stark partisan divide. 

The U.S. Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, described the crackdown as a “wasteful, misguided diversion of resources.” 

In a statement to Reuters, he said it was “making America less safe” by drawing agents and officials away from fighting corporate fraud, terrorism, child sexual exploitation and other crimes.

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, in an interview with Reuters, denied the changes across federal law enforcement were hindering other important criminal investigations. 

“I completely reject the idea that because we’re prioritizing immigration that we are not simultaneously full-force going after violent crime.”

He said the crackdown was warranted. “President Trump views what has happened over the last couple years truly as an invasion, so that’s how we’re trying to remedy that.”

On January 20, his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order, directing federal agencies to team up to fight “an invasion” of illegal immigrants. He cast the nation’s estimated 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally as the driving factor behind crime, gang violence and drug trafficking – assertions not supported by government statistics, – and accused immigrants of draining U.S. government resources and depriving citizens of jobs.

Almost immediately, federal law enforcement started posting photos of the crackdown to social media: agents wore body armor and jackets emblazoned with names of multiple agencies – including the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, known as ATF – during raids on immigrants without proper legal status.

Before this year, ATF had played almost no role in immigration enforcement. It typically investigated firearms offenses, bombings, arson and illicit shipments of alcohol and tobacco.

But since Trump’s inauguration, about 80% of its roughly 2,500 agents have been ordered to take on at least some immigration enforcement tasks, two officials familiar with ATF’s operations said. The ATF agents are being used largely as “fugitive hunters” to find migrants living in the U.S. illegally, one of the officials said.

The DEA, whose roughly 10,000 staff have led the nation’s efforts to battle drug cartels, has shifted about a quarter of its work to immigration operations, said a former official briefed by current DEA leaders on the changes. Two other former officials described the commitment as “substantial” but did not know precisely how much work shifted.

Many of the reassigned federal officials have had little training or experience in immigration law, the sources said. 

The results, so far, are mixed: the number of migrants seeking to cross the southern U.S. border in February was the lowest in decades and the number of people detained over immigration violations has surged. That hasn’t yet led to an increase in deportations, but experts expect a jump in those numbers in coming months.

Uganda’s army said it killed 242 fighters belonging to a Congolese rebel group known as CODECO after they attacked a Ugandan military camp across the border in east Congo earlier this week, a claim disputed by the group.

Uganda military spokesperson Chris Magezi said hundreds of CODECO fighters attacked a Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF) military post in the Congo locality of Fataki, in the province of Ituri, on Wednesday and Thursday.

The army retaliated on both occasions, killing 31 militants on the first day and 211 on the second day, Magezi said in a post on X late on Friday. One UPDF soldier was killed and four others injured, he added.

CODECO spokesperson Basa Zukpa Gerson refuted the army’s account on Saturday, saying that the group only lost two fighters and that the UPDF death toll was higher.

A United Nations source who did not wish to be named said 70 rebels and 12 Ugandan troops were killed.

There were further clashes between the two sides on Saturday morning, CODECO and a local civil society leader said.

CODECO fighters say their aim is to defend Lendu farmers from Hema herders, which have historically clashed over land.

The group is one of a myriad of militias fighting over land and mineral resources in east Congo, where Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have stepped up an offensive this year and made unprecedented gains.

The conflict, rooted in the fallout from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and competition for mineral riches such as tantalum and gold, is eastern Congo’s worst since a 1998-2003 war that drew in multiple neighbouring countries and left millions dead.

Uganda sent troops to Congo in 2021 to help the government fight another rebel group, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which is affiliated with the Islamic State and stages brutal attacks on villages.

UPDF troops were deployed to northern Ituri a few weeks ago to prevent the ADF from infiltrating the area, and to stop hundreds of Congo refugees from fleeing into Uganda, Magezi said.

(Reuters) 

U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy agreed on Wednesday to work together to end Russia’s war with Ukraine, in what the White House described as a “fantastic” one-hour phone call.

In their first conversation since an Oval Office shouting match on February 28, Zelenskiy thanked Trump for U.S. support and the two leaders agreed that technical teams would meet in Saudi Arabia in the coming days.

Zelenskiy asked Trump for more air defence support to protect his country against Russian attacks and the U.S. president said he would help locate the necessary military equipment in Europe, the White House said.

Trump briefed Zelenskiy on his phone call on Tuesday with Vladimir Putin, in which the Russian president rejected a proposed full 30-day ceasefire sought by Trump that Ukraine said it would be prepared to accept, but agreed to pause attacks on energy infrastructure.

That narrowly defined pause appeared in doubt on Wednesday, however, with Moscow saying Ukraine hit an oil depot in southern Russia while Kyiv said Russia had struck hospitals and homes, and knocked out power to some railways.

Still, the two sides carried out a prisoner exchange, each releasing 175 troops in a deal facilitated by the United Arab Emirates. Moscow said it freed an additional 22 wounded Ukrainians as a goodwill gesture.

Zelenskiy, describing his conversation with Trump as “positive, very substantive and frank,” said he had confirmed Kyiv’s readiness to halt strikes on Russian infrastructure and to accept an unconditional frontline ceasefire as the U.S. proposed earlier.

“One of the first steps toward fully ending the war could be ending strikes on energy and other civilian infrastructure. I supported this step, and Ukraine confirmed that we are ready to implement it,” he said on social media.

Later, the Ukrainian president told reporters in a video call that Trump understands Kyiv will not recognize occupied land as Russian.

Zelenskiy said the Russian strikes, which he said were carried out since Trump’s call with Putin, showed that Russia was not ready for peace. He said the U.S. should be in charge of monitoring any ceasefire, adding a halt to infrastructure attacks could be quickly established.

The Kremlin said it had called off planned attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, including by shooting down seven of Russia’s own drones heading towards Ukraine. It accused Kyiv of failing to call off its own attacks in what it called an attempt to sabotage the agreement.

Trump suggested to Zelenskiy the U.S. could help run, and possibly own, Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, according to a statement by the U.S. administration. Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, has been shut down since Russian troops occupied it in 2022.

Zelenskiy said Ukraine has begun talks with the U.S. about its possible involvement in restoring the Zaporizhzhia plant.

Trump has long promised to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two. But his outreach to Putin has unnerved European allies, who fear it heralds a fundamental shift after 80 years in which defending Europe from Russian expansionism was the core mission of U.S. foreign policy.

Some European leaders said Putin’s rejection of Trump’s proposed full truce was proof Moscow was not seeking peace. The offer to temporarily stop attacking Ukrainian energy facilities counted for “nothing” and Trump would have to win greater concessions, Germany’s defence minister said.

“Putin is playing a game here and I’m sure that the American president won’t be able to sit and watch for much longer,” Boris Pistorius told German broadcaster ZDF.

The EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said she would present a proposal to European leaders in Brussels on Thursday to provide Ukraine with 2 million rounds of large-calibre artillery ammunition, according to a letter seen by Reuters.

For most of the past three years, Russia has relentlessly attacked Ukraine’s power grid, arguing that civilian infrastructure is a legitimate target because it facilitates Kyiv’s fighting capabilities. Ukrainians say such attacks have subsided in recent months.

Kyiv has steadily developed capabilities to mount long-range attacks into Russia, frequently using drones to target distant oil and gas sites, which it says provide fuel for Russia’s troops and income to fund the war.

In the attacks overnight, Ukrainian regional authorities said Russian drones damaged two hospitals in the northeastern Sumy region, causing no injuries but forcing the evacuation of patients and staff.

Near Kyiv, a 60-year-old man was injured and airstrikes hit homes and businesses in the Bucha district north of the capital. Attacks damaged power systems for railways in Dnipropetrovsk in the south on Wednesday, the state railway said.

Authorities in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar said a Ukrainian drone attack caused a fire at an oil depot near the village of Kavkazskaya. No one was injured.

The depot is a rail terminal for Russian oil supplies to a pipeline linking Kazakhstan to the Black Sea. A representative of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium operator said oil flows were stable. Two industry sources said the attack could reduce Russian supplies to the pipeline.