Homeland Security task forces expand efforts targeting transnational crime

(The Center Square) – 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.”

Task force members are conducting “intelligence-driven, multijurisdictional investigations targeting drug trafficking, money laundering, weapons trafficking, human trafficking, alien smuggling, homicide, extortion, kidnapping, child exploitation and other transnational crimes,” HSTF announcements state.

The Houston HSTF is being led by ICE HSI-Houston and FBI-Houston targeting all of southeast Texas.

HSI Houston Special Agent in Charge Chad Plantz said their goal is to find “transformative ways” to address sophisticated schemes being used by transnational criminal organizations, foreign terrorist organizations, drug cartels and gangs in the region. 

In Southeast Texas, “we face a myriad of unique border-related challenges and threats from transnational criminal organizations. By establishing this permanently integrated multiagency task force with dedicated personnel from federal, state and local law enforcement working side-by-side with a common mission, we will be better postured to detect and respond to any type of threat we might face,” he said.

Houston, the largest city closest to the U.S.-Mexico border, is considered a major trafficking hub and gateway for criminal activity into the rest of the U.S. It’s only a few hours drive from Brownsville, Eagle Pass, Laredo and other major crossing points used by cartels and transnational criminal organizations. From Houston, people, weapons and drugs are moved to other major hubs like Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York and Miami within a matter of hours and days, law enforcement officers have explained to The Center Square.

FBI Houston Special Agent in Charge Douglas Williams said the new task force was “a united front unseen before in Houston. For the first time, law enforcement and intelligence agencies are focused on hunting down and eradicating transnational criminals within Houston communities. Federal, state and local police will coordinate with the U.S. Intelligence Community and overseas partners to efficiently eliminate newly designated terrorists wreaking havoc in our neighborhoods.”

The Houston area task force was launched one month after the Kansas City HSTF, which is targeting transnational crime in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. Its operations are headquartered in Kansas City (for all of Missouri), Wichita (Kansas), Des Moines (Iowa), and Omaha (Nebraska).

Its task force members have already arrested high profile targets in Nebraska including violent Tren de Aragua and MS-13 terrorist members, The Center Square reported.

In May, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bilal Essayli launched a new task force that also includes federal partners from ICE, HSI, the FBI, DEA, and ATF. They are implementing a new approach he argues is a blueprint for other federal prosecutors to follow to combat sanctuary city policies. Their strategy involves filing complaints and arrest warrants with local jails to allow federal law enforcement officers to take into custody as many criminal foreign nationals as possible, The Center Square reported.