By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department is closing a task force that took on drug cartels and an office that aimed to ease racial tensions, in a reorganization that drops a plan to merge the nation’s top drug and gun law enforcement agencies, documents seen by Reuters show.
The most sweeping reorganization of the DOJ in two decades, which Attorney General Pam Bondi approved in September, will cut about 275 positions, leading to the elimination of or involuntary re-assignment of about 140 employees, the documents show.
“Reduction in force” letters to employees whose roles will be affected in the units that are to be closed were due to be sent out earlier this week, other government documents seen by Reuters showed.
The DOJ said the changes are designed to “promote efficiencies and effective governance,” the documents show. The plan has drawn criticism from congressional Democrats and from former department employees, who say it could hurt critical work.
The Justice Department press office, whose staffing is limited because of the government shutdown, did not respond to a request for comment.
President Donald Trump’s administration has embarked on a sweeping campaign to remake the federal government, sharply cutting back international aid and environmental regulation, while redirecting a wide range of federal resources towards an immigration crackdown.
The documents do not include a plan, first reported in March, to merge the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That idea faced a bipartisan backlash in Congress, as well as resistance from DEA and ATF employees and opposition from both gun control and gun rights organizations.
It was not clear whether the merger could be reconsidered at a future time.
The plan approves closing the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, a prosecutor-led inter-agency office created in the 1980s during Ronald Reagan’s presidency to tackle major drug cartels.
It also shutters the Community Relations Service, an office that for 60 years has helped mediate racial and ethnic tensions across the United States, and a unit that helps ensure Americans have access to legal aid known as the Office for Access to Justice, the documents show.
In addition, it merges the Tax Division into the department’s Criminal and Civil divisions, in a move that will cost at least $3.1 million, the records seen by Reuters show.
Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who sits on the appropriations panel that helps set the Justice Department’s budget, told the department in a September 24 letter he objected to all of the changes and accused the department of carrying out the changes without congressional approval.
“Despite the clear lack of approval, the Department executed many controversial spend plan proposals anyway,” he wrote. “This is not normal.”
Stacey Young, a former department attorney who founded the non-profit advocacy group Justice Connection, says the changes could impede the department’s law-enforcement mission, including drug prosecutions.
“Americans will feel the harm of this administration’s slash-and-burn approach to governing,” she said. “This isn’t a reorganization — it’s a decimation of some of DOJ’s most vital work.”
The effort to close the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces surprised current and former officials, since the types of cases it oversees fall in line with the Trump administration’s priorities to pursue major drug-trafficking organizations such as the Sinaloa Cartel, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Other changes in the reorganization plan include merging the DOJ office that serves as the United States representative for the international law enforcement alliance INTERPOL into the U.S. Marshals Service, the documents show.
In the Criminal Division, meanwhile, the DOJ is merging its two sections that handle drug cases and money laundering cases. Offices that handle criminal consumer protection cases and human trafficking prosecutions will also be merged into the Criminal Division.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)
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