The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General published a report on August 20, 2026 finding that as Immigration and Customs Enforcement shifted toward immigration enforcement, its Homeland Security Investigations arm pulled back sharply from fentanyl work. The report is based on interviews with 100 HSI agents across 11 field offices.
“As ICE shifted priorities toward immigration enforcement, HSI's level of effort on fentanyl declined from fiscal years 2024 to 2025,” the report found. “Fentanyl investigations decreased by 24 percent, investigative hours spent countering fentanyl decreased by approximately 30 percent, and fentanyl seizures decreased by 39 percent.” Seizures fell from 42,166 pounds in fiscal 2023 and 33,316 in fiscal 2024 to 20,292 in fiscal 2025.
Agents in nine of the 11 offices said the shift cut their fentanyl capacity. “At one office, approximately 99 percent of HSI's work was dedicated to immigration, leaving almost no capacity for fentanyl investigations,” the report says. Agents described “An 'all hands-on deck' environment, with the office largely working immigration priorities since January 2025,” and one said a drug investigation team of seven agents was cut to “two to three” as personnel were reassigned. The report also found HSI's technology, intelligence and information sharing “did not effectively enable it to counter fentanyl entering the United States.” Newsweek reported that HSI had spent more than $150 million developing an analytics platform whose tools agents in six of 11 offices had largely abandoned, while immigration enforcement hours rose by more than 1.7 million, an increase of over 800 percent.
The report frames the consequence as a risk rather than a finding: “Given HSI's unique role in disrupting fentanyl supplies into the United States, failure to address these issues may lead to an increase in illicit fentanyl available to the public and additional overdose deaths.” ICE concurred with all four recommendations.
DHS disputes the conclusion. It told Newsweek that “ICE-HSI is working closely with the Department to track metrics and execute goals to assess how well ICE-HSI is combating fentanyl,” and said HSI “continued to carry out their action plan to combat fentanyl despite inconsistent funding for the program due to multiple Democrat shutdowns.”
A substantive objection also came from inside the agency's alumni. Scott Mechkowski, a retired ICE deputy field office director, told Newsweek that “Three of the findings are legacy problems. They're not from a FY25 policy choice,” while acknowledging “there is a real tradeoff” and noting that “hours and seizures are activity measures, not outcomes.”
The administration has consistently justified mass deportation partly as a counter-narcotics measure. Its own inspector general found the enforcement surge came at the expense of the agency's fentanyl work.