EXCLUSIVE — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has deputized State Department employees to carry out immigration enforcement duties, further expanding the pool of federal workers eligible to assist with President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort.
The Washington Examiner learned late Tuesday that Noem had signed a memorandum to deputize up to 600 State Department special agents at field offices nationwide to assist DHS agency U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers with arresting and deporting illegal immigrants inside the United States.
The memo, obtained first by the Washington Examiner, authorized special agents within the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service to perform the functions of an immigration officer, including “investigating, determining the location of, and apprehending, any alien who is in the United States in violation of the Title 8, Chapter 12 or regulations issued thereunder” and “enforcing any requirements of such statutes or regulations.”
“Under President Trump, the Department of Homeland Security will use every tool and resource available to secure our border and get criminal illegal aliens out of our country. The safety of American citizens comes first,” Noem said in a statement to the Washington Examiner on Wednesday.
Whether employees will be given special training on how to carry out immigration enforcement as immigration officers will depend on the State Department, according to DHS. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
PHOTOS FROM A BORDER PATROL RIDE-ALONG WHERE NO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS COULD BE FOUND
Noem had announced on Feb. 10 that she had requested IRS employees help ICE “round up criminal illegal aliens for deportation.” That mission would be conducted within the interior of the U.S., not at the border.
“Instead of having Biden’s 87,000 IRS agents take more money from Americans, I have requested that they help taxpayers SAVE money by helping ICE round up criminal illegal aliens for deportation,” Noem said in a post on X at the time.
Noem sent Treasury Department Secretary Scott Bessent a letter in which she called for the department to share its employees with her department, which oversees ICE and border agencies.
The IRS is not the only agency that has been called upon by Trump administration officials to help with immigration duties.
At the request of acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine “Carrie” Huffman, employees at the Department of Justice’s Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. Marshals Service were granted authority to carry out some immigration enforcement actions.
ICE has arrested thousands of illegal immigrants since President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20.
In the first week in office, the agency nabbed 2,373 people within the country. Trump and Vice President JD Vance warned on the campaign trail that 500,000 to 1 million illegal immigrants with criminal histories would be targeted for arrest and put into deportation proceedings.
The latest figure has grown to more than 11,000 arrests over the past month.
HOW TRUMP’S ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT ARRESTS STACK UP TO ‘DEPORTER IN CHIEF’ OBAMA
Immigrants are detained in federal custody while an immigration judge determines whether ICE can remove them from the country.
White House border czar Tom Homan touted on Monday that arrests were up 137% under Trump and that arrests of illegal immigrants who had criminal convictions had doubled.
