No. 2 at DOJ directs fed'l prosecutors to focus on Trump immigration enforcement policies

Deputy A.G. Todd Blanche changed priorities of long-running programs Thursday and threatened to reassign Main Justice attorneys to border states if "require[d]."

In Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s first full day in office, he began implementing President Donald Trump’s executive orders, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s related priorities, and more in a pair of memos closely aligned with many goals that Project 2025 laid out for the Justice Department last year.

Although formally centered on program administration and staffing decisions, the memos focus heavily on advancing the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement and border policies and the related topics of setting up Homeland Security Task Forces and “achieving total elimination“ of cartels and transnational criminal organizations. Additionally, one memo addresses charging decisions and stresses that the death penalty is back on the table for federal prosecutors¹, although even those are ultimately raised in reference to immigration-related prosecutions.

Blanche, who had been Trump’s criminal defense lawyer before being nominated to the No. 2 position in the Justice Department, issued the memoranda — “U.S. Attorneys' Offices Staffing Priorities” and “Operation Take Back America“ — on Thursday.²

The memos, obtained by Law Dork, were addressed to all Justice Department employees.

“AUSAs [Assistant U.S. Attorneys] must commit to investigations and prosecutions targeting all of the insidious results of the four-year invasion of illegal immigration that we are now working to repel,” Blanche wrote in the priorities memo.

The memos include implicit threats to employees at Main Justice not on board with the new priorities, as well as explicit threats of prosecution to those across the country involved in what Blanche called “efforts to obstruct removals and other immigration enforcement efforts in sanctuary city jurisdictions and elsewhere.”

The moves quickly followed Blanche’s Wednesday confirmation by Republicans in the U.S. Senate. No Democrats voted for his nomination.

The “Take Back America” memo

The “Operation Take Back America” memo announces Blanche’s directive changing the priorities of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), which begin in 1982 and DOJ describes as “the largest anti-crime task force in the country,” and Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), which began in 2001 and DOJ describes as a program intended to “to identify the most pressing violent crime problems in a community and develop comprehensive solutions to address them.”

Per Blanche’s order:

This memorandum establishes a single initiative, called “Operation Take Back America," that will use OCDETF and PSN resources to implement core policy objectives established by President Trump and the Attorney General.

Those objectives include advancing Trump administration policies in all five of the above listed subject areas — illegal immigration, cartels and transnational criminal organizations, Homeland Security Task Forces, charging decisions, and the death penalty.

“The performance of Operation Take Back America will be measured, in part, by the ability of OCDETF personnel to use criminal justice tools and resources to help with the removal of criminal aliens and to support other aspects of President Trump's immigration agenda,” Blanche wrote.

Importantly, although DOJ-led programs, both OCDETF and PSN involve extensive participation of state and local law enforcement partners. Per DOJ, OCDETF, for example, is “accountable” for “some 5,000 state/local police.”

Notably, “Operation Take Back America” seems to directly conflict with the existing goals of PSN, which DOJ details as follows:

PSN is customized to account for local violent crime problems and resources. Across all districts, PSN follows four key design elements of successful violent crime reduction initiatives: community engagement, prevention and intervention, focused and strategic enforcement, and accountability.

Per Blanche, however, the new directive turns that on its head, making the goal to push the national Trump priorities into the local districts’ activities:

AUSAs acting as PSN Coordinators in their Districts must fully participate in Operation Take Back America. This shall include coordination with OCDETF to obtain support for federal PSN cases that focus on the Operation's priorities. PSN will also partner with federal, state, and local law enforcement to advance the Operation by establishing protocols that ensure a rapid federal response to incidents within the Operation's scope—including responding and investigating instances of obstruction in sanctuary jurisdictions that endanger the residents of those jurisdictions.

That’s not all.

The “Staffing Priorities” memo

The threat to sanctuary jurisdictions is made more explicit in Blanche’s other memo, focused on the “staffing priorities” in U.S. Attorney’s Offices across the nation.

At one point, Blanche wrote:

Because unlawful impediments to President Trump's immigration policy will not be tolerated—including by state and local law enforcement, as well as misguided advocacy groups operating against the public interest—AUSAs must also charge cases involving efforts to obstruct removals and other immigration enforcement efforts in sanctuary city jurisdictions and elsewhere, see, e.g., 18 U.S.C. §$ 371, 1505; trespassing and damage to federal facilities used for immigration purposes, see, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 1382; and harboring or concealing aliens, including at prison facilities and work places, see e.g., 8 U.S.C. § 1324.

This is in the main section of the memo, which is labeled “Hiring In Border Districts” but includes some broader directives as well.

The memo specifically authorizes immigration enforcement-related hiring in “southern border” districts (which the memo details as all the districts in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, as well as the Southern District of California); all Florida districts; and the “northern border” districts of Vermont and the Northern and Western Districts of New York.

Then, there’s the implicit threat to Justice Department employees.

First, Blanche wrote:

In addition to authorized direct hiring, attorneys throughout the Department—and especially those assigned to Main Justice—are encouraged to voluntarily pursue details or permanent transfers to U.S. Attorneys' Offices in border districts.

Then, he dropped this footnote:

In the absence of voluntary attorney participation in efforts to support districts on the Border, the ongoing national emergency may require that attorneys be detailed or reassigned from their current duties at Main Justice to support these efforts.

That was day one for Blanche.

Echoes of Project 2025

“Operation Take Back America requires that OCDET surge existing resources to address the Justice Department's core enforcement priorities: stopping illegal immigration, eliminating Cartels and TCOs, and ending illegal trafficking of dangerous drugs and human beings,“ Blanche wrote in the “Operation Take Back America” memo.

The language — and the policies advanced in both memos — echo the goals for DOJ set forth last year by Gene Hamilton in the Justice Department chapter of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership.

There, Hamilton wrote:

Additionally, he wrote:

Sound familiar?

1. Ignoring the fact that Attorney General Merrick Garland brought capital cases, Trump and Blanche refer to the new administration’s death penalty policy as one of “restoring” the death penalty.

2. Law Dork obtained the memos from multiple sources, but has copied the text into new documents, which are uploaded here, to protect the anonymity of the sources.