Trump’s DOJ has cut thousands of law-enforcement jobs while vowing to get tough on crime
The Trump administration has cut more than 4,000 employees from some of the nation’s top law-enforcement agencies, even as it vowed to crack down on crime, according to records obtained by Reuters.
The records, from the U.S. Justice Department’s management unit, show that the total number of employees at the FBI has dropped more than 7% since the government’s 2024 fiscal year, a loss of about 2,600 people. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s staff has dropped by about 6%, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lost about 14% of its workers.
Other parts of the Justice Department shrank even more rapidly. Its National Security Division, which handles intelligence and terrorism matters, lost nearly 38% of its staff, the department’s records show. The division’s most recent budget request to Congress noted “unprecedented personnel constraints” in the unit that handles cases involving espionage and the export of sensitive military technology.
“It’s the difference between being proactive and entrepreneurial or purely reactive to the most obvious imperative of the day,” Adam Hickey, a former senior official in the National Security Division, said of the loss of staff.
Those records, which Reuters obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, offer the most detailed accounting to date of the extent to which the Trump administration has downsized some of the nation’s premier law-enforcement agencies.
Those agencies have traditionally handled the government’s highest-profile criminal investigations, including efforts to combat terrorism, deter drug traffickers and keep guns away from criminals.
Other records, including detailed information about people who left government jobs, show an increasing pace of departures from law-enforcement agencies after Trump began his second term in January 2025.
“The administration talks a big game when it comes to crime and terrorism, but the fact that it’s hollowing out agencies tasked with addressing them shows that they don’t stand behind their words,” said Stacey Young, a former Justice Department lawyer who leads Justice Connection, a group that supports staff leaving the department. [Continue reading…]