Donald Trump’s administration is continuing to take a sledgehammer to federal efforts to fight sex trafficking, an eyebrow-raising development in his second term.
Last week, I wrote about the administration’s apparent defunding of the National CASA/GAL Association for Children — the acronyms stand for Court Appointed Special Advocates and Guardians Ad Litem — an organization that assigns volunteer advocates to children believed to have suffered abuse, including sex trafficking victims. CASA/GAL leaders said they plan to fight back after receiving notice that federal grants were being terminated, which could leave young victims without advocates who can steer them into safe environments.
Now it appears the administration also is effectively eliminating a Justice Department unit that specializes in investigating international crime, including drug and human trafficking rings.
The Trump administration is “decommissioning” a Department of Justice unit that has long been at the center of dismantling transnational organized crime networks, drug cartels and human trafficking rings.
Leaders of the unit, called the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, or OCDETF, were told they had until Sept. 30 to shut down operations, people familiar with the matter said. The people asked not to be identified, citing concerns over potential retribution.
An email sent last Monday by a DOJ budget analyst to a counterpart at OCDETF said that the unit’s fiscal year 2026 budget would be “zeroed out” and the independent office dissolved, according to records obtained by Bloomberg News in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and the people familiar with the matter.
Bloomberg also obtained an email in which the OCDETF’s deputy director sought guidance on “the process for closing down OCDETF functions in the wake of zeroing our budget” for fiscal 2026. The unit has been credited for the capture of infamous drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is now serving life in prison.
In a statement, the DOJ told Bloomberg: “This Department of Justice will continue our law enforcement efforts against transnational criminal organizations in order to make America safe again.” But there’s no reason to believe gutting this division will improve the nation’s ability to fight crime. And when it comes to the fight against sex trafficking, the Trump administration’s CASA/GAL cuts and its gutting of this DOJ unit seem to throw a wrench in some of the shameless and slanderous political attacks from the right in recent years.
Some MAGA figures have promoted conspiracy theories linking liberals to sex trafficking while portraying themselves as saviors to victims. But in reality, it’s their leader — Trump — whose administration is potentially putting victims at risk.