The Denver Art Museum has previously acknowledged that two relics from Thailand in its collection are part of that federal investigation.

Since 2007, HSI says it has repatriated over 20,000 items to more than 40 countries.

But the Trump administration, as part of its unprecedented mass-deportation agenda, earlier this year dissolved the cultural property program and moved the agents to immigration enforcement, multiple people with knowledge of the change told The Denver Post.

Homeland Security officials did not respond to requests for comment.

A few months after Trump took office, a Homeland Security staffer with knowledge of the antiquities field told The Post that they received an email from their bosses. The message, according to their recollection: “The way of the world is immigration. Bring your cases to a reasonable conclusion and understand that the priority is immigration operations.”

This individual, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said they were given no time frame for the new assignment. Leadership, though, was clear that there would be no new cultural property cases.

Instead of conducting these investigations, this individual said they have been driving detainees between detention facilities and the airport for their deportation.

“I just spent almost a month cuffing guys up, throwing them in a van from one jail to another,” this person said, adding that the work doesn’t take advantage of their specialized training.

It’s frustrating, the individual said, because cultural property cases don’t require a lot of agents or resources. They don’t need all types of fancy electronic equipment.

“The juice from the squeeze on these cases is a lot more than people wanna give it credit,” this person said.

For years, HSI has been investigating two Thai relics in the Denver Art Museum’s collection after officials in Thailand raised issues with their provenance, or ownership history.

The pieces — part of the so-called “Prakhon Chai hoard” — were looted in the 1960s from a secret vault at a temple near the Cambodian border, The Post found in a three-part investigation in 2022. Villagers told the newspaper that they recall dredging the vault for these prized objects and selling them to a British collector named Douglas Latchford.

A federal grand jury decades later indicted Latchford for conspiring to sell plundered Southeast Asian antiquities around the world. He died before he could stand trial.

Latchford funneled some of his stolen antiquities through the Denver Art Museum due to his close personal relationship with one of the museum’s trustees and volunteers, Emma C. Bunker, The Post found.

The museum told The Post last week it hasn’t received any communication from the federal government since December, before Trump took office.

High-profile cases in New York and Denver are proceeding despite the reallocation of resources, one agent said.

With the federal government mostly out of the game, cultural heritage investigations will be largely left to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in New York City, which has an Antiquities Trafficking Unit.

But the DA’s office relies heavily on its partnership with HSI, which has federal jurisdiction and can serve warrants and issue summonses across the country. The Manhattan DA’s office only has authority over New York.

“The future for the DA’s office and the (antiquities trafficking) unit is in jeopardy,” said an individual familiar with the Manhattan unit’s dealings, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “It’s unclear who’s going to be swearing out warrants going forward.”

A spokesperson for the Manhattan DA declined to comment for