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A diversion of law enforcement personnel and resources to assist with Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign and deployments to US cities has undermined the government’s efforts to combat child exploitation and human trafficking, Democratic lawmakers warned.
In the letter, sent on Wednesday and first shared with the Guardian, nearly two dozen House Democrats demand that the homeland security and justice departments “immediately” restore full staffing and resources to their anti-trafficking divisions. It also makes reference to the Jeffrey Epstein investigative files, arguing that the government’s failure to publicly release the full scope of the documents in its possession “damages trust in institutions meant to deliver justice”.
“The United States cannot claim to be serious about ending human trafficking while simultaneously dismantling the infrastructure built to fight it,” they write in the letter, sent to the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, and the US attorney general, Pam Bondi.
The Democrats accuse the Trump administration of neglecting the federal government’s moral obligation to protect vulnerable youth, especially those within the foster care system, who are disproportionately targeted for exploitation. They request a briefing within 30 days related to the reallocation of personnel or funding from these programs to immigration or other enforcement priorities.
On Trump’s first day in office, he signed an executive order reorienting the mission of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – formed after 9/11 in response to foreign terror threats – around the enforcement of immigration laws, leading to the large-scale deployments of federal agents into US citizens. In Minneapolis, federal agents shot and killed two US citizens – Renee Good and Alex Pretti – sparking a furious backlash to the administration’s tactics.
“I am incensed that federal resources from DHS, from [the justice department] – we’re talking about prosecutors, we’re talking about agents, we’re talking about funds – are being diverted away from anti-human trafficking programs and reassigned to immigration enforcement,” the California congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove, who organized the letter, said in an interview. “It is a dereliction of duty to say the least, but it is egregious considering how heinous these crimes are.”
Last month, a group of Democratic senators raised similar concerns in a letter sent to the president, Noem and Bondi, in which they demanded the administration provide a “full accounting” of officers who have been redirected to immigration enforcement and a list of all investigations affected by the reassignments. Responding to the senators’ letter, a DHS spokesperson told the Guardian the Democratic senators were “ignorant of any basic understanding of how [DHS] functions”, arguing crimes such as human trafficking and terrorism had a “nexus to illegal immigration”.
The calls follow reporting documenting the impact of the reassignments, as thousands of agents from a slew of agencies are sent to work on Trump’s immigration crackdown. In September, the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute thinktank published an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) document from August 2025, which showed that more than 25,000 officers had been diverted from their regular duties to assist with immigration enforcement operations.
The letter from House Democrats specifically highlights a New York Times investigation in November finding the intense focus on deportations had taken resources away from investigations into sexual crimes against children, an inquiry into a hidden market that finances terrorism and other federal anti-trafficking programs.
The Trump administration insists the president’s border policies are “making America safer than ever before”. “By securing that border this last year, zero children – zero children – have been trafficked in the last 12 months because of President Trump’s leadership,” Noem claimed in a Fox News interview last weekend.
Kamlager-Dove, whose Los Angeles-area district is home to a notorious sex-trafficking corridor known as “the Blade”, was incredulous. She said she had spoken to local prosecutors, church groups and advocates whose work has been strained by the federal reassignments.
“Why are these girls no longer important?” the congresswoman said. “Is it because they’re Black and brown? Is it because they’re in a Democratic city? Or is it because this administration doesn’t care about protecting children?
“If you do care,” she continued, “show us some receipts and work with us.”
