Federal data released for June 2025 reflect a marked decline in new criminal matters referred by federal investigative agencies. According to TRAC, a nonpartisan research organization funded by Syracuse University, ATF referrals to U.S. Attorneys for federal gun violations fell 14.2%. Likewise, DEA referrals for federal drug offenses declined 10.4%, and the U.S. Marshalls Service by 12.6% during the same period. These changes follow recent Justice Department directives reassigning thousands of federal agents from ATF, DEA, and the Marshals Service to support immigration enforcement operations.
TRAC emphasizes that referral counts are a leading indicator and that downstream effects on charging decisions, convictions, and sentences will appear more slowly. ATF itself estimates an average of roughly four years between referrals and the final disposition of the case.
At the same time, immigration referrals and prosecutions have surged. TRAC’s separate July analysis shows DHS sending increasing numbers of illegal-entry cases to federal prosecutors. Defendants charged with immigration offenses rose from 3,344 in February to 6,885 in May. The referrals for prosecution, however, are dwarfed by the number of arrests: 39,244 by ICE and CBP in May alone. This discrepancy may be due to ICE targeting individuals not subject to criminal prosecution, such as those who enter legally but overstay their visa.
To support the Trump administration’s deportation goals, many federal case agents are now splitting time between traditional criminal cases under their traditional jurisdiction and immigration-enforcement operations. Reuters reported in May that the FBI has instructed agents to allocate about one-third of their time to immigration enforcement through at least the end of 2025, deprioritizing white-collar cases. According to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, the result of the DOJ overhaul is “fewer complex investigations, less time to build cases, and a decline in prosecutions.”
Overall, CBP and ICE are referring 7 times more cases to federal prosecutors than ATF, 7.3 more cases than the DEA, and 3.3 times more cases than the FBI.
Implications for Federal Criminal Practice
Based on the decreasing referral trends, federal defense attorneys may anticipate fewer firearms and narcotics cases going forward, especially in in the southwest-border districts where immigration prosecutions are rising fastest.
Practitioners can also expect possible overreach by agents and prosecutors in existing criminal cases to compensate for the lack of new cases. Offices facing fewer referrals may pursue aggressive charging or raise their standards for prosecution-declination decisions. Finally, with non-immigration agents pulled in multiple directions at once, these trends may raise opportunities to exploit hurried investigations. Practitioners may see compressed timelines in their cases, thinner affidavits from case agents, and discovery gaps as government investigators and prosecutors juggle their assignments.