Under Patel, FBI heightens focus on violent crime, illegal immigration. Other threats abound, too.
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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 Trump, who has made a crackdown on illegal immigration, cartels, and transnational gangs a cornerstone of his administration.
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The FBI said in a statement that its commitment to investigating international and domestic terrorism has not changed. That
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
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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.
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
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.
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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;
Testifying before lawmakers last month, Patel noted the surge in terrorism threats following the
Rounding out the priority list are two newcomers: 'Rebuild Public Trust' and 'Fierce Organizational Accountability.'
Those reflect the claims — amplified by Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino — that faith in the bureau had eroded 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
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They've also pledged to examine matters that have captivated attention in conservative circles, like the
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
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
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