Congressional Democrats begged the Justice Department to stop lending law enforcement agents and officers to Homeland Security to help with President Trump’s deportation push, saying it’s taking them away from “true public safety threats.”

Led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, the lawmakers said Tuesday that the illegal immigrants being targeted “pose no threat to public safety.”

“Unfortunately, this administration has made it clear that it sees all immigrants as criminals and priorities for removal, making no distinction between an undocumented mother with no criminal record and a convicted murderer,” the Democrats wrote to acting Attorney General James R. McHenry III.

Under an agreement between Homeland Security and the Justice Department, some law enforcement personnel from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Marshals have been deputized to assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement make arrests of illegal immigrants.

The Democrats said those officers should be working on gun and drug crimes and arresting violent criminals.

“We hired and trained these law enforcement officials to handle extremely important and sensitive tasks essential to the safety and security of our nation,” they wrote. “Forcing these officials to abandon the responsibilities for which they were hired will allow dangerous criminals to remain free and expose countless Americans to more violent crime.”

SEE ALSO: Venezuelan gang members become first migrants shipped to Guantanamo Bay

They pointed to “disturbing” reports of zealous arrests, including one media claim that a grandmother, mother and toddler were taken to a detention center after they were overheard speaking Spanish. All three are U.S. citizens, the report said.

Trump officials have said their chief targets in the early days of immigration enforcement are criminals, though they have also said that if other illegal immigrants are encountered during regular operations they are fair targets too.

ICE has been highlighting some of the more prominent arrests in a series of social media posts.

They include ones such as Jorge Altamirano-Arau, arrested by ICE’s Seattle office, whose criminal record included sexual abuse; Mario Bernabe-Juan, arrested by the San Diego office, whose criminal record included sexual assault and aggravated assault with a weapon; Marcelino Flores-Betancourt, identified as a member of the Tango Blast gang whose criminal record included aggravated assault.

ICE has also been touting arrests where Justice Department officers helped out, including the FBI in New York and the U.S. Marshals Service in Denver and Buffalo.

In one Buffalo arrest ICE said the Marshals assisted in arresting Jesus Romero-Hernandez, a Mexican who has been deported six times and has a felony record for illegally reentering the U.S. ICE said it had a criminal warrant for Romero’s arrest but the Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office refused to cooperate.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.