Trump’s EPA Claims Strong Enforcement. But the Data Tells a Different Story.

The EPA released its latest enforcement and compliance report and touted the agency’s crackdown on environmental crimes under the Trump administration, yet 75 percent of the criminal cases closed last fiscal year originated before the president took office.

For over a decade, Hino Motors Ltd. imported and sold more than 105,000 vehicles and engines with misleading or fabricated emissions data, until testing by the Environmental Protection Agency revealed the emissions-fraud scheme. 

The case would lead the Toyota subsidiary to plead guilty and agree to pay over $1.6 billion in fines over five years and forfeit an additional $1 billion in profits made from the illicit sales.

On Monday, the EPA touted the case in its enforcement and compliance assurance results for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2025, contending in a press release that the agency closed more cases in President Donald Trump’s first year of his second term than in any year of the Biden administration. 

Yet 75 percent of the EPA’s 61 criminal cases that were adjudicated in federal court during that time originated before Trump’s second term, EPA records and legal documents show. The EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice announced the Hino Motors penalty Jan. 15, 2025—five days before Trump’s inauguration.

The EPA did not respond to questions from Inside Climate News about the enforcement and compliance numbers.

In announcing the Trump administration’s results, the EPA says that in the last fiscal year, it concluded 2,127 civil enforcement cases, assessed over $1.2 billion in civil penalties and criminal fees and secured more than $6.4 billion to return facilities to compliance. The veracity of the figures listed on the EPA website hinges on when the investigations began and the nature of the compliance actions, whose details are lacking. 

“This is a release that is propaganda,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and a former senior enforcement attorney at the EPA. “It doesn’t reflect reality in a number of ways.”

One example: The EPA has stopped enforcing the Clean Air Act, Whitehouse said, negotiating only one settlement since the Trump administration took office, compared to 26 in the first year of Trump’s first term and 22 in Biden’s first year. Clean Air Act enforcement actions often involve the fossil fuel and motor vehicle industries that account for most air pollution. Superfund cleanup settlements, Whitehouse said, have also hit new lows.

The data comes after multiple watchdog reports have documented major drops in enforcement under the Trump administration’s EPA, finding the Department of Justice filed just 16 cases during Trump’s first year back in office—a 76 percent decrease compared to President Joe Biden’s first year.

The EPA touted other high-profile criminal enforcement cases, including prosecution of J.H. Baxter & Co. and its president for knowingly venting hazardous air pollutants into the atmosphere. The EPA announced the $1.5 million fine in April 2025, but the Oregon-based company was charged in November 2024, under the Biden administration.

In a case against Miske Enterprise, a federal judge sentenced Delia Fabro-Miske to seven years in prison in April 2025. However, Fabro-Miske pleaded guilty in January 2024 to falsifying pesticide and fumigation records, as well as to charges unrelated to environmental protection, such as bank fraud, obstruction of justice and wire fraud. 

Under the second Trump administration, the EPA has levied nearly $17 million in criminal fines and restitution. The bulk of the penalties, $15.7 million, were incurred by Murex Management, an ethanol marketing and logistics company, in a plea agreement related to defrauding banks.

Several defendants in other cases have not yet gone to trial or are awaiting sentencing, court records show, including 13 Chinese nationals indicted for stealing and re-selling restaurant cooking oil, transporting it across state lines and laundering the proceeds.

Experts have warned that it’s unlikely enforcement levels will be maintained, given the administration’s downsizing of the EPA and rollback of various regulations to protect the climate and environment.

The EPA lost more than 4,000 employees in the first year of Trump’s second term, bringing its staffing down to a 40-year low, according to an Inside Climate News analysis of federal workforce data. That represents a reduction of 24 percent, more than double the proportion of jobs lost across the entire federal workforce in that time. The DOJ’s environment division, meanwhile, lost a third of its lawyers over the past year, according to an analysis from E&E News.

“The outlook for EPA in the immediate future, for having a meaningful enforcement program, is quite bleak, and that’s by design,” Whitehouse said. “That’s what the administration wants. They want to disassemble the enforcement program at EPA. They’re [sharing] these numbers to create a false sense of security in the American public.”

Cover photo:  Heavy traffic is seen on Interstate 110 in Los Angeles on Feb. 13. Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said the EPA has stopped enforcing the Clean Air Act under the second Trump administration. Credit: Apu Gomes/Getty Images