In major shift, FBI spent 1 million manpower hours catching illegal aliens since Trump took office

The swanky Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket communities on the Massachusetts coastline are best known for politicians like Barack Obama who flock there for summer vacation or for the Hollywood elites who filmed iconic movies like Jaws on their beaches.

But over Memorial Day week, a new class of visitors hit the island enclaves – G-men from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement who helped round up about 40 suspected illegal aliens, including an MS-13 gang member and a child sex offender.

The details of the operation – obtained by Just the News – were included in reports that are now sent weekly to new FBI Director Kash Patel that show how and when FBI agents are assisting the Homeland Security Department and other police agencies in helping to deport millions of illegal aliens who crossed borders during the Biden era.

Gangs, drugs, human trafficking and child exploitation

The FBI’s hands-on role – and the attendant manpower investment – is one of the quieter aspects of President Donald Trump's signature border security initiative.

But it has paid some large early dividends: As of Monday, FBI agents have participated in joint operations with ICE, DEA and local police partners to help arrest more than 10,000 illegal migrants since Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20, the FBI disclosed Tuesday.

Most of the targets are aliens believed to be engaged in criminal behavior like gangs, drug and human trafficking and child exploitation, officials said.

"With over 10,000 immigration-related arrests, the Bureau under the direction of Director Patel is making it clear it’s not turning a blind eye to the border crisis," Erica Knight, an adviser to Patel, told Just the News.

"It’s targeting the violent cartels and criminal networks that are exploiting it. This is the direction Americans have been demanding, and the Bureau is delivering on the promise to put safety and sovereignty first," she added.

Documents reviewed by Just the News show Patel has shifted a significant percentage of FBI agents and other support personnel like analysts into at least part-time immigration enforcement work: about 5,448 alone as of the last week of May.

That included 555 FBI employees in Los Angeles, 195 in Philadelphia, 333 in Houston, 213 in San Antonio and 142 in Baltimore, the records show.

Some states welcome the FBI's new direction

In all, the FBI has logged 1,055,432 manpower hours since Jan. 20 dedicated to immigration enforcement with Homeland and other law enforcement partners, the records show.

On May 29, according to the operations report sent to Patel, FBI agents in Jacksonsille and Tallahassee assisted a Homeland Security investigation that targeted a Florida carpentry service. The raid ended with 74 arrests in what the FBI reported was a human smuggling operation.

A company owner was “operating a smuggling and labor scheme of Mexican citizens, smuggling the individuals into the country and forcing them to work at rates below minimum wage for his construction company,” the FBI after-action report stated.

The FBI resource commitment is welcomed in states long overrun with the related scourges of the border crisis, like fentanyl.

"I think we are making progress,” West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey told Just the News on Tuesday when asked about the FBI’s less heralded assistance on immigration matters.

Morrisey was one of the first GOP governors to commit state law enforcement to Trump’s immigration crackdown partnerships, one he says is paying dividends. “People don't fully appreciate that in West Virginia, we have severe problems with fentanyl, and a lot of the fentanyl comes through because it's smuggled either across the border, it's between the ports of entry, it's within the ports of entry," Morrisey  told the John Solomon Reports podcast.

"West Virginia sees a massive amount of death because of the border disorder that was created by Joe Biden and others,” he added. “What Trump is trying to do is absolutely correct, and so we've been working in our state to show strong support for that, and that's going to continue.”