Why It Matters

A major federal task force dedicated to combating drug trafficking and organized crime has been dismantled and replaced by a new structure aligned with the Trump administration's immigration enforcement priorities.

According to a Congressional Research Service report published in June 2026, the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF), created in 1982, was closed in a year ago after operating for more than four decades as the largest anti-crime task force in the U.S.

The Big Picture

OCDETF operated as a prosecutor-led, multi-agency model coordinating federal, state and local law enforcement across nine regions and 19 strike forces. OCDETF managed the Consolidated Priority Organization Target and Priority Transnational Organized Crime target identification processes and operated the OCDETF Fusion Center and co-located International Organized Crime Intelligence and Operations Center for intelligence sharing, with federal partners within DOJ, DHS, the departments of Labor and State, the Treasury Department and the Postal Service. The program received $547 million in dedicated funding for fiscal 2025.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14159, titled "Protecting the American People Against Invasion," which directed the attorney general and homeland security secretary to jointly establish Homeland Security Task Forces to counter cartels, foreign gangs, transnational criminal organizations, human smuggling and trafficking and enforce immigration laws. The new task forces have, in part, replaced OCDETF. Operation Take Back America, which used OCDETF resources, expanded the mission to include immigration enforcement and cases involving obstruction of immigration objectives by sanctuary jurisdictions.

The Trump administration's fiscal 2026 budget request proposed eliminating dedicated OCDETF funding and shifting program management from a stand-alone Department of Justice component to a task force director within the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. Resources would instead be provided through participating DOJ components rather than through a centralized OCDETF appropriation. OCDETF's caseload was transferred to the newly formed Homeland Security Task Forces following the closure.

The Bottom Line

The 2023 White House Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime has not yet been updated to reflect OCDETF's elimination, leaving questions about how the loss of the dedicated task force could affect implementation of that strategy and related federal initiatives.

H.R. 5918 and S. 4004, the Protect Law Enforcement Task Forces Act, were introduced to statutorily authorize OCDETF to combat transnational organized crime and reduce the availability of illicit narcotics through a prosecutor-led, multi-agency approach.

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