PHOENIX — Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche vowed on Wednesday to continue transforming the Justice Department into an enforcement arm for the president’s mass-deportation and anti-immigration priorities, adding that under his leadership the DOJ would prioritize denaturalization cases that seek to strip citizenship from recent immigrants.

“We are on track to surpass the number of denaturalization filings the Biden administration submitted in four years. We’re going to pass that, I think, in about a week,” he told a receptive audience of border-security agents and business contractors during a speech at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix.

“This is another way that we’re able to deal with border security, is going after these folks who came into this country ... and we’re saying, you cannot stay here. You have to go. We’re trying to protect the integrity of the naturalization process,” Blanche continued.

Earlier in the speech, the acting attorney general also said that prosecutors have been given explicit instructions to seek punishment for any physical resistance to the increasingly combative deportation raids seen nationwide.

“We’re going to make sure nobody can touch you without facing the full wrath of the federal government,” Blanche said.

He drew applause from the crowd when he said that prosecutors would more frequently issue criminal charges for “assault on a federal officer,” a crime that carries a potential yearlong jail sentence and a fine of up to $100,000.

White House border czar Tom Homan, speaking at the same conference Tuesday, said he’d “flood the zone” in New York with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents if the state stops local police from acting as deputized deportation officers.

Together, the speeches at the Border Security Expo foreshadow a continuation of the civil unrest witnessed in the first 15 months of the Trump administration, with top officials leaning further into the idea that disparate federal law-enforcement agencies can be utilized as a kind of national police force.

Blanche this week became the first attorney general, acting or otherwise, to speak at the annual business conference for federal contractors that service the U.S. government’s rapidly expanding immigration-enforcement apparatus. The visit serves as further indication of the Trump administration’s resolve to blur the lines between the DOJ and Department of Homeland Security. Both now receive regular direction from White House adviser Stephen Miller on policies that have seen federal personnel used as an auxiliary force to support the administration’s deportation roundups.

Democrats in Congress have repeatedly asked for clarity — to no avail — on how many agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service have been diverted to assist ICE and Border Patrol. Scores of former federal agents and prosecutors, particularly those with experience on counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations, have expressed concerns that investigators are not able now to stay focused on disrupting foreign spy operations and potentially disastrous attacks on American soil.

Still, Blanche assured those in the immigration-focused audience on Wednesday that the Trump administration remains committed to shifting law enforcement’s attention to deporting undocumented immigrants and blocking migrants from crossing the border without preauthorized paperwork.

“What’s the practical effect of not just saying, ‘We will work together,’ like everybody always says, but actually putting in place processes and mandates from leadership that we will work together? The results are that we have FBI agents, DEA, Marshals working on Title 8 work,” he said, referring to the section of the U.S. code that governs immigration and naturalization laws.

“That hasn’t happened in the past. We have every federal agency, it doesn’t matter your badge, it just matters that you’re an 1811,” he said, referring to the federal classification for criminal investigators. “We have every agency focused on the mission of illegal immigration.”

“Remember, that’s the first time in history that we’ve done that,” he added.

Blanche also addressed the overwhelming negative press coverage of recent incidents involving immigration agents — including the killing of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis and a number of agents who have smashed the windows of bystanders who happened to witness deportation raids.

“No matter what the media says, no matter what they say about us, what we do is keep the community safe,” Blanche said.

The acting attorney general, who replaced Pam Bondi when President Donald Trump fired her last month, made a rare acknowledgement that the DOJ has largely failed in its many attempts to defend immigration policies in federal court. He blamed judges that he claimed — falsely — have “often been handpicked by whatever organization has filed a lawsuit against us.” He said the Trump administration would continue to appeal to higher courts, but made no mention of the fact that this legal strategy would likely bring matters before appellate judges who may have political alignment with MAGA, or inevitably the Supreme Court, where Trump has secured a conservative majority.

“It’s a battle. It’s something that we know we’re going to lose, and we have to keep on with it and just go through the process and appeal, and we’re having extraordinary success in virtually every circuit,” Blanche said. “And we’re going to keep on doing this.”

Blanche later added that the administration is also actively looking at retaliating against municipalities that consider themselves sanctuary cities, but he cautioned that he didn’t want to yank away DOJ funding that normally supports local police departments.

“Is it a good idea to pull funding from a local law-enforcement group? It’s not their fault the legislature is doing what they’re doing,” he said, adding that the administration is considering other punitive measures.

“We’re looking at whether we can financially make it difficult for these cities,” he said.