Under Patel, FBI heightens focus on violent crime, illegal immigration. Other threats abound, too

WASHINGTON — When federal authorities arrested an accused leader of the MS-13 gang, Kash Patel was there to announce the case, trumpeting it as a step toward returning "our communities to safety.''

Weeks later, when the Justice Department announced the seizure of $510 million in illegal narcotics bound for the U.S, the FBI director joined other law enforcement leaders in front of a Coast Guard ship in Florida and stacks of intercepted drugs to highlight the haul.

His presence was meant to signal the premium the FBI is placing on combating violent crime, drug trafficking and illegal immigration, concerns that have leapfrogged up the agenda in what amounts to a rethinking of priorities and mission at a time when the country is also confronting increasingly sophisticated national security threats.

A revised FBI priority list on its website places ''Crush Violent Crime'' at the top, bringing the bureau into alignment with the vision of President Donald Trump, who has made a crackdown on illegal immigration, cartels and transnational gangs a cornerstone of his administration.

The FBI said in a statement that its commitment to investigating international and domestic terrorism has not changed. That threat was laid bare over the past month by a spate of violent acts, most recently a Molotov cocktail attack on a Colorado crowd by an Egyptian man who authorities say overstayed his visa and yelled ''Free Palestine.''

The bureau said it continuously assesses threats and ''allocates resources and personnel in alignment with that analysis.''

Signs of restructuring abound. The Justice Department has disbanded an FBI-led task force on foreign influence and the bureau has moved to dissolve a key public corruption squad in its Washington field office.

''If you're looking down five feet in front of you, looking for gang members and I would say lower-level criminals, you're going to miss some of the more sophisticated strategic issues that may be already present or emerging,'' said Chris Piehota, a retired senior FBI official.

Immigration enforcement in particular is a new focus for the FBI. Since Trump's inauguration, the FBI has assumed greater responsibility for that work, saying it's made over 10,000 immigration-related arrests. Patel has highlighted the arrests on social media, doubling down on the administration's promise to prioritize immigration enforcement.

Agents have been dispatched to visit migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without parents in what officials say is an effort to ensure their safety. Field offices have been directed to commit manpower to the issue and the Justice Department has instructed the FBI to review files for information about those illegally in the U.S. and provide it to the Department of Homeland Security unless doing so would compromise an investigation.

A mandate to ‘crush violent crime'

There's precedent for the FBI to rearrange priorities to meet evolving threats, though for the past two decades countering terrorism has remained a constant atop the agenda.

The FBI's new list of priorities places ''Crush Violent Crime'' as a top pillar alongside ''Defend the Homeland," though FBI leaders stress that counterterrorism remains the bureau's principal mandate.

Patel's direct predecessor, Christopher Wray, often said he was hard-pressed to think of a time when the FBI was facing so many elevated threats at once. At the time of his departure last January, the FBI was grappling with elevated terrorism concerns; Iranian assassination plots on U.S. soil; Chinese spying and hacking of Americans' cell phones; ransomware attacks against hospitals; and Russian influence operations aimed at sowing disinformation.

Testifying before lawmakers last month, Patel noted the surge in terrorism threats following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas and a Chinese espionage threat he said had yielded investigations in each of the bureau's offices. But the accomplishments he dwelled on first concerned efforts to ''take dangerous criminals off our streets,'' including the arrests of three suspects on the ''Ten Most Wanted'' list, and large drug seizures.

A new focus for the agency

Rounding out the priority list are two newcomers: ''Rebuild Public Trust'' and ''Fierce Organizational Accountability.''

They've also pledged to examine matters that have captivated attention in conservative circles, like the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade. Employees have spent hours poring over documents from the sex trafficking case against financier Jeffrey Epstein, a favorite subject of conspiracy theorists, to prepare them for release.

James Gagliano, a retired FBI supervisor, said he was heartened by an enhanced violent crime focus so long as other initiatives weren't abandoned.

''Mission priorities change,'' Gagliano said. ''The threat matrix changes. You've got to constantly get out in front of that.''

The Trump administration has touted several terrorism successes but it's also employing a broad definition of what it believes constitutes terrorism.

FBI and Justice Department officials see the fight against transnational gangs as part of their counterterrorism mandate, taking advantage of the administration's designation of the violent street gangs MS-13 and Tren de Aragua as foreign terrorist organizations to bring terrorism-related charges against defendants, including a Venezuelan man suspected of being a high-ranking TdA member.

There are signs of a broader national security realignment.