That is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has decided to ignore immigration law enforcement to concentrate on child pornography investigations.  Not that child porn should not be investigated, but even the miserly 8 arrests HSI has trumpeted recently, none of those cases were exclusive to HSI.  In fact, as usual in such cases, a local law enforcement agency was the lead, as it should be.  Child pornography is a crime traditionally investigated and prosecuted at a local level.

ABC News June 8, 2012 by Jack Cloherty

Sentences in Worldwide Child Sex Ring

“Thanks to international cooperation and first class forensic analysis by Homeland Security Special agents here in Boston, along with our Massachusetts State Police partners, an individual arrest in Milford has led to a network of child pornographers that has spanned the globe,” said Bruce M. Foucart, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, Boston. “An individual photo discovered on Mr. Diduca’s computer has led to 33 arrests and 138 children being saved worldwide. Eight of those arrested live in the United States.”

In fact ICE HSI piggy backs its child porn cases off work that most commonly originates with a local law enforcement agency or from Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces funded by the Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and led by the FBI, which provides managers and agents to the ICAC task forces composed primarily of local agency detectives and officers. It is also little known that most child porn cases are brought to various law enforcement agencies by a Hollywood funded private company that scourers the internet for copyright violations for the film and music industry.  As a public service while searching the internet for illegally downloaded films and music, it also searches for child porn sources and peer-to-peer sharers of child porn, then alerts local law enforcement and the ICACs to child porn users.  Big Brother is out there, but he is Hollywood funded. 

Which tells one much, it is primarily a local crime best suited to investigation and prosecution at the local level.  And such investigations are unrelated to ICE's supposed mission, homeland security.  Investigators assigned to support child porn investigations are unavailable to track and arrest alien terrorists, alien gang members, or any other supposed priority of ICE.  In fact child porn investigations have one imperative at ICE, to keep HSI Special Agents away from illegal aliens, illegal alien criminals, work-site enforcement, benefit fraud investigations, and alien terrorists; away from anything remotely related to immigration law enforcement. 

Not only does the management of ICE object to their immigration law enforcement responsibilities, but they have their own bureaucratic objective to rebuild the legacy U.S. Customs Service (USCS) Office of Investigations. ICE HSI wants nothing to do with immigration enforcement and child porn is the manner in which they are avoiding it like the plague. 

Kind of strange for an agency whose very name starts with immigration and ends with enforcement!  And in the above case, the most significant examples of child porn discovered were images created by Americans in the United States.  So there is not even a customs connection for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enforce.