OCDETF 2021 FY
. 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.
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.
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.