By Andrew Goudsward and Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department will focus on hiring prosecutors in offices near U.S. borders to enforce President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, despite a federal hiring freeze, according to the new U.S. deputy attorney general.
The directive is designed to boost staffing for cases involving illegal entry into the United States, drug and human trafficking and activity by drug cartels, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote in a memo to department staff on Thursday and seen by Reuters.
“Border Districts have a unique role to play in these efforts,” Blanche wrote in the memo.
The exemption from the hiring freeze will apply to U.S. attorney’s offices in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and southern California along the U.S.-Mexico border. It will also apply to districts in Florida as well as in New York and Vermont near the Canadian border, where Blanche said illegal immigration had increased in recent years.
The move is the latest indication that the Justice Department under Trump plans to prioritize immigration-related crimes. Department officials have already directed prosecutors to scale back enforcement in areas such as foreign bribery and covert influence to focus on immigration issues.
Justice Department leadership has told prosecutors to bring the most serious charges available in cases related to immigration.
Blanche, a former top criminal defense lawyer for Trump, was confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday and sworn in as the department’s second-highest ranking official on Thursday.
He urged lawyers at the Justice Department’s Washington headquarters to voluntarily accept transfers to border districts and suggested some prosecutors would be required to go if there were not enough volunteers.
Federal prosecutors in those areas will seek to bring terrorism-related cases against certain cartels that Trump designated as foreign terrorist groups, Blanche wrote in the memo.
They will also pursue cases against local officials and advocacy groups accused of impeding federal immigration enforcement and harboring undocumented immigrants, according to the memo.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Michael Perry)
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