Government Executive – “Federal agencies have deployed nearly 33,000 employees to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in its efforts to dramatically ramp up detention and deportation of undocumented individuals, according to a new report, significantly multiplying the number of employees working on enforcement efforts. About 20,000 of those employees came from outside ICE, the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, found, including some agencies that have sent significant portions of their workforces to the deportation effort. ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, which is responsible for investigating transnational crimes including drug and human trafficking, has sent more than 12,000 employees to the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division. HSI as of the most recent data on ICE’s website had “more than 10,000 employees,” meaning it has both grown and sent nearly its entire workforce to assist with immigration enforcement…”

See also CATO Institute Report – “Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is diverting criminal law enforcement agents away from their investigations and enforcement responsibilities to conduct civil immigration enforcement operations on a massive scale. New data highlight how widespread this misuse of government personnel and resources is. Congress should prevent this diversion of appropriated funds in the next government spending bill. According to ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) records given by ERO to someone outside the agency who shared it with Cato, ICE is receiving assistance from nearly 17,000 non-ERO agents, including 14,500 federal criminal law enforcement officers. Separately, the DHS revealed in a now-deleted post yesterday that ICE has already trained and unleashed 8,501 state and local police as 287(g) Task Force Officers who can independently conduct ICE arrests. It states that it has over 2,000 more in training.

See also Wired – State Department Agents Are Now Working With ICE on Immigration. The State Department’s law enforcement arm is now involved in immigration enforcement, an area solidly outside its usual duties. One source compares it to IRS agents investigating espionage at NASA.