“Most of all, it’s a coordination mechanism to let the (agents in the) field know that they're all working on a similar theme,” Jack Kelly, a former DEA supervisory special agent, told USA TODAY. And they can help unify often-feuding agencies and dedicate their efforts toward the greater goal of keeping Americans safe. They’re instrumental in marshaling all of the disparate threads of evidence and intelligence together, often from various filing and information-sharing systems. government to focus various elements of an investigation, or a broader interagency process, toward one goal, officials say. The Drug Enforcement Administration, for instance, has similar operations of its own, but it falls under the Justice Department, which goes before a different committee when it's time for oversight.

Many of them were overdose victims who unwittingly took black-market painkillers or recreational drugs laced with the lethal synthetic opioid that are being mass-produced by Mexican drug cartels.īy some estimates, there are scores, or even hundreds, of these federal efforts to counter the manufacturing, smuggling and sale of fentanyl and related problems, including human trafficking, in which the cartels are also engaging in at increased levels. is facing intensifying urgency to stop the worsening fentanyl epidemic.ĭrug deaths nationwide hit a record 109,680 in 2022, according to preliminary data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The hearing was particularly timely, because the U.S. Some of the more exotic and offbeat names of major Department of Homeland Security operations were revealed this week in a high-profile House of Representatives hearing on fighting the flow of fentanyl coming through the southern border. Preferably, the names sound pretty cool, and they're often a closely held secret until the operation is over and the suspects are in custody. When the federal government recently announced it had stopped 10,000 pounds of fentanyl from entering Arizona and Southern California from Mexico, the special name attached to the counternarcotics initiative was somewhat confusing: Operations Blue Lotus and Four Horsemen.īut this kind of cryptic labeling is not uncommon in federal law enforcement, where agents like to show they are serious about tackling drug traffickers and other criminals by giving their efforts an intriguing code name. Watch Video: DEA warns of 'rainbow fentanyl' as overdoses surge across the US

What real meth crackback