Threat of Iranian retaliation sparks questions about US terrorism readiness amid Trump immigration crackdown

Boston Globe

4 hours ago

Nearly half of all agents in the bureau's 25 largest field offices are now devoted to immigration, according to
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The shift has been symbolic, too: When Trump took office, the FBI website listed its top priority as 'Protect the US From Terrorist Attack.' With Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist, now in charge of the bureau, its website now lists 'Crush Violent Crime' as its top priority, with 'Defend the Homeland' second.
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Meanwhile, at the Department of Homeland Security, ProPublica reported this month that Thomas Fugate, a 22-year-old recent college graduate and former Trump campaign worker with no apparent national security experience now
In response to the US airstrikes over the weekend, Tehran reportedly sent communications to Washington threatening to activate 'sleeper cells' to carry out terror attacks domestically, and
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Though Iran indicated its reportedly telegraphed
'You've seen under the Trump administration a shift of resources away from counterterrorism … to focus instead on the mass deportations that they've been pursuing, and I do believe that that puts Americans more at risk,' said Representative Seth Magaziner, a Rhode Island Democrat who serves on the House Homeland Security Committee.
In response to an inquiry from the Globe, a FBI spokesperson said the bureau 'does not comment on specific operational adjustments or personnel decisions. However, we continuously assess and realign our resources to respond to the most pressing threats to our national security and to ensure the safety of the American people.'
DHS declined to comment.
Advocates for the administration's aggressive immigration crackdown — which has been defined by high-visibility deportation raids — have argued that it actually supports the counterterrorism mission at hand. Speaking about the Iran strikes on Sunday, Vice President JD Vance argued on NBC News that people in the country illegally might pose a terror threat.
Zack Smith, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, pointed to the millions of people in the country who have not been fully vetted by authorities. 'It is more critical than ever for federal law enforcement to find these individuals and to enforce our nation's immigration laws,' said Smith, because 'these individuals were never vetted and law enforcement currently has little, to no, information about them.'
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Federal authorities have not specifically connected how people in the US illegally could fit into Iran's plans. It's also not clear exactly how much staffing power and resources the federal counter-intelligence apparatus has lost to immigration efforts since Trump took office.
Beyond the question of refocusing resources, the federal government simply has fewer people at its disposal, thanks to Trump and Elon Musk's workforce cuts. Since the administration offered voluntary buyouts in February, the Department of Justice, which houses the FBI, lost 4,000 employees. There are further plans to eliminate an additional 1,500 FBI positions,
In general, however, the federal government has been gradually reducing its focus on counterterrorism after the surge following Sept. 11, but it's not clear the country has become more vulnerable because of Trump's shift in resources, said Alex Plitsas, who leads the counterterrorism project at the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council think tank. 'The terrorists only have to be right once. We have to be right every single time,' he said. 'It becomes a question of knowing what we don't know … that's the tough part of the equation.'
The nature of warfare and terrorism has changed dramatically just in the last few years, said Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana who served on the 9/11 Commission, which produced the definitive report on those terrorist attacks. He argued those changes should require particular vigilance and attention on the part of federal authorities.
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'Leading up to 9/11, we found the FBI moved substantial resources over time to white-collar crime and some domestic priorities,' Roemer said, even though 'the crumbs were certainly leading us to the belief that terrorism was on the rise. We don't want to make those kinds of mistakes in the future.'
According to some experts, Iran's ability to inflict retaliatory pain on the US has evolved significantly. Despite being severely punished by the airstrikes and generally depleted, the Iranian regime is 'continuing to find new ways to land a blow,' said Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran program director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank that is harshly critical of the Islamic Republic.
Notably, in November 2024, US officials announced that they had neutralized an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump during the 2024 campaign. Iranian officials brushed off the charge and blamed Israeli agents for fomenting the claim.
For the US, 'the big question is, one wonders how they have adapted to the threat?' Taleblu asked. While not immediately concerned about the balance of federal resources, he argued that more can and should be done.
'Iran is always operating in the background and in periods of crisis, one wonders if their regime is going to respond — naturally, I think assets should be devoted to this target set more,' he said.
The Iranian regime has invested particularly heavily in its cyberattack capabilities, which experts continue to regard as a serious threat. From
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The federal government launched the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in 2018 to respond to those kinds of threats. But that agency has
The consequences of that loss of expertise could be significant, said Chris Painter, a former cybersecurity official at the White House and State Department under Barack Obama.
'There are certainly good people still at CISA, at the FBI, left in the intelligence community, but there are consequences when you significantly downgrade those activities and you prioritize other things,' he said.
Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said reports of shifts in US resources from counterterrorism to immigration concern him given Iran's global reach in conducting or funding cyber and conventional attacks.
'There's a history of the Iranians doing these kinds of things outside of the Middle East and it seems to me, based on what I read, that we are less prepared than we were as a result of the focus on immigration enforcement,' Cook said.
Sam Brodey can be reached at