As President Donald Trump pushes federal regulation enforcement towards an immigration crackdown, brokers and prosecutors concern he’s drawing sources from one of the weak teams: victims of kid sexual exploitation on-line.
Present and former authorities staff inform The Verge that the Trump administration’s laser deal with border safety threatens to pressure investigations into on-line crimes in opposition to youngsters. Brokers, together with in departments that work on little one security, are being reassigned or given additional caseloads. Prosecutors are discovering themselves unfold skinny. One former agent at Homeland Safety Investigations (HSI), who like others on this article was granted anonymity to debate the internal workings of presidency businesses, says it’s not out of the extraordinary for federal brokers to be shuffled amid altering priorities — “however this, for a single precedence shift, or single case right here, that is in all probability the most important I’ve seen.”
HSI, a subdivision of the Division of Homeland Safety’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has lengthy performed a key function in investigating little one exploitation crimes. The company fought for and secured distinct branding from ICE final yr earlier than Trump took workplace, “to work with out the undue toxicity that in some locations comes with the ICE moniker,” ICE performing director Patrick Lechleitner mentioned on the time. However studies from Reuters and USA Today have discovered that 1000’s of federal regulation enforcement brokers, together with from HSI, have been advised to focus efforts and sources on administration priorities, together with immigration enforcement. Present and former authorities sources verify the shift in priorities to The Verge.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin didn’t handle a query from The Verge about what number of brokers had been assigned to work immigration circumstances exterior of their typical workload. “Almost each day ICE arrests pedophiles, kidnappers, little one smugglers, and intercourse traffickers, together with those that entered our nation illegally,” McLaughlin mentioned in a press release, pointing for instance to the arrest of Honduran citizen Olvin Rodriguez-Inestroza, who just lately pleaded guilty to distributing child sexual abuse material, or CSAM. She additionally mentioned HSI was “main efforts” to conduct welfare checks on minors who crossed the border unaccompanied.
“Of their try to point out how sturdy they’re on this matter, are taking sources from issues which can be so vitally vital”
As extra staff tackle added immigration enforcement obligations, individuals The Verge spoke with mentioned they concern an already intractable downside may compound, even when brokers actively working little one exploitation circumstances aren’t those instantly reassigned. “This administration, of their try to point out how sturdy they’re on this matter, are taking sources from issues which can be so vitally vital, and such a menace to this nation,” says Brock Nicholson, a retired HSI agent. “You possibly can solely stretch your means up to now, and for those who’re attempting to do extra with much less, at a sure level, you’re simply going to do much less.”
The previous half-decade has seen little one exploitation investigators going through a quickly rising quantity of potential prison materials reported to the Nationwide Middle for Lacking & Exploited Kids (NCMEC), which operates a nationwide report clearinghouse known as the CyberTipline. Again in 2019, the CyberTipline obtained 16.9 million studies from tech firms and members of the general public. In 2022, it noticed about 32 million studies, and in 2023, it noticed 36.2 million. Final yr noticed a relative drop to twenty.5 million, however NCMEC believes that’s due partly to giants like Meta transferring towards end-to-end encryption, which makes incidents more durable to trace.
Do you’re employed in regulation enforcement or have data to share concerning the authorities’s response to on-line little one exploitation? Attain out securely and anonymously with suggestions from a non-work gadget to Lauren Feiner by way of Sign at laurenfeiner.64.
CyberTipline reports usually alert the federal government to specific photos of kids being handed across the web, against the law in its personal proper and generally proof of different still-ongoing abuse. NCMEC additionally passes alongside proof of practices like sextortion, the place youngsters are coerced into sending sexual photos and financially extorted to maintain them personal. More and more, it’s fielding studies of sexual images created with generative AI.
A December 2022 US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, nevertheless, discovered that the Justice Division — which prosecutes circumstances of alleged little one exploitation investigated by brokers like these at HSI — had did not prioritize a nationwide technique for tackling threats posed by new expertise and was not assembly all of its statutory necessities from the 2008 PROTECT Our Kids Act, which aimed to strengthen regulation enforcement response to web little one exploitation crimes. DOJ spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre mentioned in a press release to The Verge that the DOJ had launched a nationwide technique in June of 2023 and is at the moment engaged on the subsequent replace, which “will replicate the continued prioritization of efforts of the Division and its companions to fight little one exploitation.”
John Pizzuro, CEO of lobbying group Raven, which advocates for extra regulation enforcement funding to fight little one exploitation, says that even earlier than Trump, “the issue is that the precedence has by no means been little one exploitation.” Over his 25-year profession in regulation enforcement, together with main the New Jersey Web Crimes In opposition to Kids (ICAC) Activity Drive, Pizzuro says little one exploitation has been “the least-prioritized crime side in regulation enforcement, bar none.”
“The issue is that the precedence has by no means been little one exploitation”
The brand new administration has in a minimum of one case in the reduction of on what many enforcers see as a precious useful resource. A flagship DOJ-hosted coaching convention, the Nationwide Regulation Enforcement Coaching on Baby Exploitation, was canceled this year with little public rationalization; one supply speculates it was a casualty of a DOGE-related funding freeze. Baldassarre didn’t present a cause for the convention’s cancellation, nor verify whether or not it was associated to DOGE cuts, however mentioned in a press release, “This Division of Justice can stay centered on two crucial priorities on the identical time: prosecute criminals who exploit youngsters and make sure the environment friendly use of taxpayer {dollars}.”
One DOJ official says that when Trump got here into workplace, “we noticed the priorities shift dramatically in the direction of immigration. It was like every part was immigration-related.” As investigative brokers the DOJ works with noticed their focus diverted to serving to with immigration enforcement, the official says, “all of their circumstances, all of their investigations, come to a grinding halt.”
These delays can imply the distinction between constructing a case in opposition to a predator and letting the path go chilly. A stalled investigation appears to be like like every part from an agent ready longer to overview proof to a grand jury subpoena’s outcomes sitting of their inbox unchecked. There are set limits on how lengthy investigators can maintain on to a telephone or pc they’re analyzing for proof, and the DOJ official says a choose is unlikely to grant multiple or two time extensions.
The statute of limitations for some CSAM circumstances runs out after 5 years, a deadline that, the official recollects, was already generally tough to satisfy. “It’s not as a result of these are difficult circumstances,” the official says. “These are a number of the easiest, [most] simple circumstances. It’s simply that they have been sort of backlogged, as a result of there’s not loads of brokers who need to do these circumstances. It’s not a precedence for the businesses, and it takes a very long time with the restricted sources.”
The Trump administration has deprioritized some non-immigration operations on the DOJ, like certain kinds of white-collar crime enforcement. However that hasn’t left extra sources for on-line little one exploitation. When one other DOJ official noticed their part’s work downscaled earlier this yr, they have been introduced with a listing of switch choices, together with work on points like violent crime and human smuggling. The Baby Exploitation and Obscenity Part (CEOS) was not on the listing.
Baldassarre didn’t verify or dispute this level, and declined to supply staffing numbers for CEOS, citing a coverage in opposition to discussing personnel. “Preserving youngsters protected from sexual abuse and exploitation is a Division precedence,” she mentioned in a press release. She additionally mentioned that extra little one exploitation circumstances had been charged between October 2024 and July 2025 than throughout the identical interval a yr earlier, leaping from 2,494 to 2,676, and pointed to the DOJ’s “tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in funding to NCMEC, the ICAC activity forces, and organizations dedicated to defending American youngsters.”
“They appear to imagine we reside in a world of limitless sources, and that’s simply not the place we’re”
Amid the shift in focus to immigration, the Trump administration has reportedly purged DOJ lawyers who labored on circumstances that implicated the president. And much more have left the company after taking deferred resignation provides — CBS News reported in June that 4,000 DOJ staff took the so-called Fork within the Highway agreements. “They appear to imagine we reside in a world of limitless sources, and that’s simply not the place we’re,” the second DOJ official says, noting a gradual stream of goodbye social gathering messages or LinkedIn posts of colleagues leaving the company this yr. “On the identical time, they’re anticipating all of us to be pumping out these numbers on immigration and weapons and medicines circumstances. And it’s simply not possible to do each what they’re anticipating there, and do what I view as equally — if no more — precedence work of the cyber crimes and the white-collar stuff.”
One other federal regulation enforcement officer says that the added workload of immigration circumstances means “I’m burning each ends of the stick.” Consequently, “it’s simply created a scenario the place we’ve got to triage what the worst of the worst is, and perhaps a number of the different stuff has to take a seat. It nonetheless will get labored, it simply has to take a seat just a little longer.”
Trump and plenty of of his supporters have loudly and steadily claimed to battle little one exploitation, invoking each actual incidents — just like the abuses of Jeffrey Epstein — to imaginary ones, just like the elaborate conspiracy theories of QAnon. (Trump was as soon as associates with Epstein and has been accused of participating within the abuse as effectively, although his administration has denied any allegations and insisted he has nothing to hide.) However that hasn’t translated into the identical sort of focus the administration has paid to immigration up to now.
A lot of the dialog about defending children on-line in recent times has revolved across the function tech platforms ought to play. Trump signed the Take It Down Act, which, along with criminalizing nonconsensual intimate photos of adults and youngsters, requires websites to rapidly take away them. Congress got here shut final yr to passing the Children On-line Security Act (KOSA), which might place an onus on tech platforms to safeguard children from sure harms, till Republican Home management blocked it from a full vote.
Given the dimensions of the issue of CSAM and different on-line abuse, attempting to assault it on the supply could make sense. However Maureen Flatley, an advocate for enforcement funding, warns that undue deal with the businesses liable for a lot of the tricks to NCMEC can distract from the urgent problem of going after the precise criminals at challenge. “On the finish of the day, Mark Zuckerberg can’t investigate the Yahoo boys. He can’t challenge search warrants. He can’t arrest anyone,” Flatley says of the Meta CEO.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) beforehand launched the Invest in Child Safety Act to direct $5 billion towards this space of regulation enforcement. He tells The Verge he launched it “to attempt to ship a message that as a senior member of the Senate, I assumed this was a precedence, and I needed to have a major allocation of funds to get the expertise. And constantly, for the reason that Trump individuals have are available, they’ve taken us backwards, quite than make any ahead progress.”
Wyden just lately sent a letter to the DHS Inspector General asking to research the reported shifts in resourcing towards immigration on the expense of different areas, however says he’s but to get a substantive response. “It simply appears to me that the Trumpers are giving a path to rapists and little one predators and ignoring the sexual abuse of those weak younger individuals to get their numbers up by way of immigrants,” he says.
“It’s simple arithmetic: while you take sources from doing that and do different issues, an under-prioritized space is much more under-prioritized,” says Nicholson. “And it simply strikes me, shouldn’t these children be our largest precedence, not our least precedence?”