OCDETF 2021 FY

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. Budget Summary

The FY 2021 Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) Program Budget

Request comprises 2,834 positions, 2,792 FTE, and $585,145,000 in funding for the Interagency

Crime and Drug Enforcement (ICDE) appropriation, to be used for investigative and

prosecutorial costs associated with OCDETF cases. OCDETF cases target high-level

transnational, national, and regional criminal organizations and networks that present a threat to

public safety and national security and are engaged in the illegal production or trafficking of

drugs or other controlled substances, priority transnational organized crime, drug-related

violence, or the illegal concealment or transfer of proceeds derived from such illicit activities.

Established in 1982, the OCDETF Program is the centerpiece of the Department of Justice (DOJ)

long-term inter-agency drug enforcement strategy. OCDETF also plays an integral role in

implementing Presidential Executive Order 13773 (EO 13773), Enforcing Federal Law with

Respect to Transnational Criminal Organizations and Preventing International Trafficking. EO

13773 recognizes organized crime is no longer associated exclusively with traditional domestic

groups; is fully transnational in its origin, composition, and scope; and poses unprecedented

threats to U.S. national and economic security. These threats include not only high-level

organized drug trafficking but also attempts by organized criminals to exploit our energy and

other strategic sectors; support terrorists and hostile governments; manipulate our financial,

securities, and commodities markets; victimize large swaths of our citizens, private industry, and

government agencies through targeted cyber intrusions; and engage in other serious criminal

activities.

The OCDETF Program directly supports:

 EO 13773 (February 9, 2017).

 Presidential Executive Order 13776 (EO 13776) establishing a Task Force on Crime

Reduction and Public Safety (February 9, 2017).

 DOJ Strategic Goal 1.3: Combat unauthorized disclosures, insider threats, and hostile

intelligence activities.

 DOJ Strategic Goal 3.1: Combat violent crime, promote safe communities, and uphold

the rights of victims of crime.

 DOJ Strategic Goal 3.2: Disrupt and dismantle drug trafficking organizations to curb

opioid and other illicit drug use in our nation.

OCDETF’s mission has always involved disruption and dismantlement of drug-centric

transnational criminal networks that present a transnational organized crime (TOC) threat to the

U.S. At any given time, OCDETF’s active case inventory includes hundreds of ongoing

investigations targeting priority TOC targets.

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The OCDETF Program does not encompass all federal drug or TOC enforcement efforts. It is

focused only on efforts targeting the highest priority organized drug trafficking, money

laundering, and transnational criminal organizations. These powerful networks represent one of

the greatest threats facing our country, with enormous implications for our national security,

economic prosperity, and public safety.

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Introduction

The Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) program is the focal point of

the Attorney General’s strategy to reduce the availability of illicit narcotics by using a

prosecutor-led, multi-agency approach to counter-drug and counter-transnational-crime

enforcement. OCDETF leverages the resources and expertise of its partner components within

the federal government as well as numerous state and local agencies in concentrated, long-term

investigations of major drug trafficking, money laundering, and other high priority transnational

organized crime networks. OCDETF’s federal partners include:

 DOJ: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Drug Enforcement

Administration (DEA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Marshals Service

(USMS)

 Department of Homeland Security (DHS): Homeland Security

Investigations/Immigration and Customs Enforcement (HSI), U.S. Coast Guard (USCG),

U.S. Secret Service (USSS)

 Department of the Treasury (Treasury): Criminal Investigation Division/Internal

Revenue Service (IRS)

 Department of Labor (DOL): Office of the Inspector General (DOL-OIG)

 Department of State (State): Diplomatic Security Service (DSS)

 U.S. Postal Service (USPS): U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS)

Led by the Director, a career prosecutor, and an Executive Office staff of approximately three

dozen, OCDETF constitutes the largest anti-crime task force in the country with almost 600

federal prosecutors, 2,000 federal agents, 18 Strike Forces, and over 4,750 individual task forces.

The Director implements the nationwide OCDETF strategy built upon four essential pillars:

targeting, coordination, intelligence, and directed resourcing. OCDETF’s top priority will be to

leverage these pillars to operationalize its activities, providing information and resources to our

law enforcement and prosecution partners in a manner that drives the most complex and difficult

cases to a successful conclusion.

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OCDETF drives priority targeting in both top-down and bottom-up approaches. The OCDETF

Director manages the Attorney General’s Consolidated Priority Organization Target (CPOT)

process, which is the top-down multi-agency process for designation of identified priority drug

trafficking threats across the nation. This marshals the resources of federal law enforcement

agencies from every corner of the United States to focus attention and effort on the most serious

national narcotics trafficking threats. OCDETF also manages the Priority Transnational

Organized Crime (PTOC) process, which is the multi-agency process for the designation of

investigations of priority non-drug organized crime threats. These combined processes focus

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attention and resources on threats agreed upon through a multi-agency selection and vetting

process, to reflect the considered judgment of national level priorities. In addition, OCDETF

simultaneously uses a bottom-up targeting process, encouraging its nine regions to designate

regional priorities in recognition of the importance of acknowledging that regional threats

sometimes differ widely. The threats to the populace in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and

Vermont may be quite different than those in Arizona and New Mexico; therefore, OCDETF

empowers Regional Directors to work jointly with OCDETF partners to designate and tackle

regional priorities as well as national ones.

Coordination is essential to the success of the OCDETF program. Given the size and breadth of

the program, coordination occurs through both national and local level processes. OCDETF will

continue to use Federal Agents as Law Enforcement Associate Directors based in Washington,

D.C. to coordinate and strengthen operations. OCDETF will empower the nine Regional

Directors to leverage their considerable decision making power in the field to build bigger

regional cases. OCDETF will expand its Strike Force initiative using these tactical multi-agency

teams to coordinate the biggest, most complex, regional investigations and prosecutions. The

lead attorneys and commanders in OCDETF’s 18 Co-Located Strike Forces will network across

the nation to leverage their considerable authorities and create the greatest possible impact

disrupting and dismantling criminal organizations.

Properly coordinated intelligence information directed at national and regional multi-agency

targets leverages the OCDETF network to its fullest. This “intelligence” pillar is based largely in

the OCDETF Fusion Center (OFC) and the diverse multi-agency approach to ingestion,

digestion, and sharing of law enforcement reporting where law enforcement datasets combine to

create the single largest repository of federal criminal case reporting enabling OCDETF to drive

national targeting and provide actionable operational intelligence products to initiate, expand,

and support field investigations and prosecutions. OCDETF will modernize the OFC for the first

time in 15 years and will create more dynamic query capabilities to leverage our national

coordination and targeting strengths – resulting in more robust investigations and case making.

Directed resourcing is the last of the four pillars. It remains an essential aspect of OCDETF

program success. OCDETF’s ability to put resources behind the top-down and bottom-up

drivers of targeting and the national coordination foundation of the program are critical and have

proven successful. OCDETF continues to actively resource federal prosecutors, federal agents,

overtime costs for state/local police from over 1,500 police departments, 18 Strike Forces, and

dozens of creative operational initiatives born from creative, forward-leaning, prosecutor-led task

forces looking to find seams to exploit in the ever-changing network of transnational organized

criminal organizations.