Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said on Saturday that her department is “really worried” President-elect Donald Trump‘s focus on mass deportation of undocumented immigrants will divert funds and resources from investigations into serial killers, cold case homicides, and human trafficking cases, among other state and federal cases.
Trump, who won the 2024 presidential election earlier this month, campaigned on a platform promising mass deportations for illegal migrants and stricter border policies.
The president-elect has previously warned that he’ll deploy the U.S. National Guard, as well as government agencies, to carry out his proposed deportation policy. However, there are questions over the legal limits on military involvement in domestic law enforcement.
On November 18, Trump affirmed a post by conservative commentator Tom Fitton on Truth Social that claimed the Trump administration is “prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program.” The president-elect reshared the post and wrote: “TRUE!!!”
MSNBC’s Alex Witt said on Saturday, “President-elect Trump says he plans to declare a national emergency now to secure the necessary resources to deport millions of undocumented immigrants,” before asking Nessel, a Democrat who has served in the state’s top legal post since 2019, “How might the diversion of funds to deport people impact our state and federal partnerships in human trafficking, and cold case sexual assault?”
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Nessel responded that “we are really worried about this” as the state partners with local, state, and federal authorities, including the FBI and Homeland Security on various crime cases.
“We’ve sort of already been told by some of those [partner] entities, that some of our ongoing projects where we work to apprehend serial killers and cold case homicides and human trafficking cases, that they don’t know they’re going to be available to work with us on those kinds of cases in the future because they’re going to be so busy diverting their finite resources to try to apprehend individuals who may be in the country illegally,” Nessel said.
She added: “When you decide to use your resources to capture those individuals [undocumented immigrants] as opposed to going after murders, and serial rapists, and human traffickers, we’re making our communities a whole lot less safe by doing that.”
In response to Nessel’s comments on MSNBC, Steven Cheung, Trump’s campaign spokesperson who has been tapped to serve as his communications director, told Newsweek in an email Saturday afternoon: “This idiot is trying to play the victim here in order to subvert the will of the American people who voted overwhelmingly for President Trump’s immigration and border policies.”
Newsweek has reached out Nessel’s office for comment via email on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Karoline Leavitt, Trump-Vance transition team spokesperson, previously told Newsweek that Trump “will marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history while simultaneously lowering costs for families.”
Nessel has publicly criticized Trump, having authored an opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press on Wednesday that criticized several of Trump’s Cabinet picks for their histories of sexual assault allegations.
In August, Nessel warned of a second Trump presidency during an appearance on MSNBC‘s The Katie Phang Show. In reference to the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot and Trump’s alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election results, in which President Joe Biden won, Nessel said, “I think that what we saw in 2020, it is going to pale in comparison to what we are likely going to see in 2024 and, again, it is not my job to decide winners or losers. It is my job to defend the will of the people, whatever that might be.”
Trump, meanwhile, won the battleground state of Michigan in November against Vice President Kamala Harris.
