New Homeland Security Task Forces (HSTF) are launching nationwide to expand efforts to target transnational crime. A new HSTF launched in Houston this month, one month after a HSTF launched in the Midwest.
Although federal law enforcement partners have been targeting transnational crime for years, President Donald Trump directed the departments of Homeland Security and Justice to establish HSTFs to conduct targeted enforcement efforts in a Jan. 29 executive order.
The HSTFs are regional and led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations field offices and FBI field offices. Participating agencies include the DEA, ATF, U.S. Marshals Service, IRS’ Criminal Investigative Division, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations, High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area directors, U.S. attorneys and others.
They are operating under Trump’s order, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” which directed the DHS and DOJ to create HSTFs to “end the presence of criminal cartels, foreign gangs, and transnational criminal organizations throughout the United States, dismantle cross-border human smuggling and trafficking networks, end the scourge of human smuggling and trafficking, with a particular focus on such offenses involving children, and ensure the use of all available law enforcement tools to faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States.”
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Author: Ray Hilbrich
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