FBI Agents Ordered to Prioritize Immigration, Downgrade White-Collar Investigations

In a notable change in the federal law enforcement priorities, the FBI has directed its agents to spend about a third of the time on immigration enforcement, thereby diverting attention from white-collar crime investigations for the rest of 2025. The move fits neatly into the Trump administration’s stepped-up effort to crack down on illegal immigration according to Reuters.

At the same time, the DOJ issued new guidance restricting the white-collar cases that federal prosecutors will pursue. Matthew Galeotti, director of the DOJ’s Criminal Division, stressed the importance of pursuing matters like health care fraud, trade and customs fraud, elder securities fraud, complex money laundering (including operations with Chinese entities) and financial crimes related to terrorism and transnational organized crime. Prosecutors were encouraged to “minimize the duration and collateral consequences of those investigations” and to consider whether corporate misconduct warrants joining the choir of federal prosecutions.

What Are the Risks of Scaling Back White-Collar Crime Investigations?

The adjustment of resources has alarmed legal experts and former officials. Detractors worry the change will degrade corporate accountability by taking away resources from white-collar crime efforts. Moreover, the change could compromise the FBI’s capacity to combat complex and impactful financial crimes at all.

The strategy of the Trump administration could be described as a larger program to bring thousands of federal law enforcement agents from different agencies to engage in immigration enforcement. The program could be characterized as a larger, comprehensive plan that represented a massive shift of federal law enforcement’s attention and commitment away from white-collar crime and to immigration enforcement.