Headquarters Offices
Every day, in cities across the U.S. and countries around the world, HSI special agents, criminal analysts and support personnel protect the nation from global threats. The focus of HSI HQ is to ensure that our workforce has the support and resources they need to accomplish this critical mission.
While HSI’s field offices domestically and internationally direct and lead our day-to-day operations, HSI HQ personnel provide national-level management and oversight on several fronts:
- Investigations: For every type of investigation we conduct, there is an HQ unit responsible for managing each program at a national level. HQ personnel provide guidance, support, subject matter expertise and coordination for our investigations conducted in the field. HQ also ensures timely reporting of significant enforcement actions to agency and department leadership and to the public.
- Initiatives: HQ personnel develop, implement and manage nationwide and international initiatives and projects that advance HSI’s mission and priorities.
- Intelligence Analysis: The HSI Office of Intelligence provides national level criminal analysis on our investigations, illuminating criminal networks and helping to connect the dots between cases to ensure we maximize our ability to prevent crime and keep the public safe.
- Resources and Administration: HQ ensures our field offices have the tools, equipment, personnel and funding needed to accomplish our mission.
- Policy: HQ personnel are responsible for developing and implementing policies governing the operational and administrative work we perform.
- Training: HQ oversees and coordinates basic and advanced level training for HSI personnel, including the HSI Academy at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
- Relationships and Partnerships: HSI HQ develops and maintains relationships with key partners, including the Departments of Justice, State and Defense, with other federal law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community, with foreign embassies and consulates in Washington, D.C., with Congress and with industry and non-governmental organizations.
- Strategy: HSI executive leadership sets the strategic vision and direction for HSI, prioritizing investigations and initiatives.
HSI HQ is organized into nine separate divisions, each led by an Assistant Director who reports to the HSI Deputy Executive Associate Director and HSI Executive Associate Director.
Administrative Operations
Office of Administrative Operations (OAO) provides HSI domestic and international offices with budget formulation, budget execution, financial oversight, acquisitions and procurement, workforce management, and other administrative services.
OAO manages logistics and internal control activities; oversees HSI’s fleet, travel, property, and facilities; reports on HSI’s performance, coordinates the development and issuance of policies, delegation orders, and forms that HSI needs to address its national security and public safety missions; ensures that HSI’s resources are aligned to the broader goals of ICE and DHS; and supports all HSI Headquarters, field offices, and mission areas with strategic planning, analytics, modeling, and efficiency studies to facilitate fact-based decision making.
Center for Countering Human Trafficking
Center for Countering Human Trafficking (CCHT) advances counter human trafficking law enforcement operations, protect victims, and enhance prevention efforts by aligning DHS’ capabilities and expertise.
Countering Transnational Organized Crime
Countering Transnational Organized Crime (CTOC) supports investigations and operations related to transnational crime, financial and narcotics violations, human trafficking, human smuggling, and public safety.
It also supports law enforcement partners through training, technical assistance, forensic laboratory analysis, and worksite enforcement.
CTOC includes the Financial and Fraud and Public Safety and Border Security Divisions, which integrate a variety of programs and operations that investigate transnational criminal organizations; support field office investigations through training and capacity building; and partner with governmental, non-governmental, and industry organizations to disrupt and/or dismantle criminal networks.
In addition, CTOC is responsible for providing investigative support services, including technical assistance and guidance to all HSI undercover operations, polygraph operations, tactical and emergency response programs, victim assistance, and special agent basic training, as well as overseeing the HSI Forensic Laboratory.
Cyber and Operational Technology
Cyber and Operational Technology (COT) oversees investigations of cyber-enabled and cyber dependent crimes, including child exploitation, and manages initiatives that combine information sharing and technology across DHS.
COT supports ICE and DHS by improving methods for managing different types of information and operational technology and directing how these tools are shared with other agencies and organizations. COT, which houses both the HSI Innovation Lab and the Cyber Crimes Center, directly supports HSI's law enforcement and mission support programs and helps develop major advancements in technology used to combat crime through initiatives such as technical surveillance operations, Cybersecurity, Computer Forensics, Title-III communication intercepts, and the Repository for Analytics in a Virtualized Environment (RAVEN), HSI’s next-generation platform for data analytics.
COT proactively uses these technologies to keep pace with emerging computer technology and cyber processes that support investigations into cyber-related criminal activities and vulnerabilities with state-of-the-art investigative methods and computer forensic techniques. COT also ensures that HSI complies with current information technology standards and security requirements, supports information sharing and intelligence reporting, and gathers and distributes reports based on statistics collected during investigative casework.
The Information eXchange Unit (IXU), formerly known as the Law Enforcement Information Sharing Initiative (LEISI) is housed within COT. IXU’s mission is to harnesses technology, data, and information to connect partners with actionable findings, fostering safer and more resilient communities.
Domestic Operations
Domestic Operations is responsible for managing, directing, and coordinating all investigative activities, initiatives, and operations of HSI’s domestic field offices.
It promotes the implementation of and adherence to policies, procedures, guidelines, and directives governing investigative activities. It also oversees all major HSI enforcement initiatives and is responsible for monitoring and evaluating the productivity of the various field offices and ensuring prompt communication of significant activity from field offices to Headquarters management.
Global Trade
Global Trade provides oversight and support for investigations of the nation’s import and export laws to promote national security; protect the public’s health and safety; stop predatory and illegal trade practices; and prevent terrorists, foreign entities, and criminal organizations from illegally trafficking weapons of mass destruction and transferring critical technology and arms to restricted or prohibited persons, groups, or nations.
Global Trade includes:
- The National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center) and the Export Enforcement Coordination Center (E2C2), which are at the forefront of the federal government’s response to combatting global intellectual property theft and the enforcement of U.S. international trade laws.
- The Counterproliferation Investigations Program, which prevents illicit procurement networks, terrorist groups, and hostile nations from illegally obtaining U.S. military products, sensitive dual-use technology, weapons of mass destruction, and/or chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials.
- HSI’s investigative programs that focus on intellectual property theft, trade fraud, and forced labor.
Priorities: Upholding Fairness in Global Trade Web Feature: Global Trade Investigations
International Operations
International Operations protects the homeland by coordinating and conducting international investigations and law enforcement operations in partnership with foreign counterparts to detect, deter, and dismantle transnational criminal organizations and prevent terrorist activity.
International Operations maintains a network of offices and liaisons around the world who leverage the joint capacity of HSI and international partners to advance investigations and diminish the capability of transnational criminal organizations and terrorists to threaten our national security.
International Operations is the largest international investigative arm of DHS. It interacts with the international law enforcement community to investigate all manner of criminal activity, including customs and immigration violations. In addition to pursuing and supporting cases in all HSI investigative disciplines, International Operations manages the Visa Security Program (VSP), the Transnational Criminal Investigative Unit (TCIU) Program, and the Biometric Identification Transnational Migration Alert Program (BITMAP). International Operations also delivers international training to foreign partners and supports global law enforcement capacity building efforts.
National Security
National Security (NS) plays a critical role in advancing ICE’s mission by leading the effort to identify, disrupt, and dismantle transnational criminal enterprises and terrorist organizations that threaten the security of the United States.
NS includes the National Security Program which integrates the agency’s national security investigations and counterterrorism responsibilities and the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP). SEVP works with NS partners to reduce both the risk of benefit fraud and the exploitation of the student visa system using the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a web-based system to collect, maintain, and provide reliable information on F and M students, J exchange visitors, their dependents, schools certified by SEVP and designated programs.
Office of Intelligence
The Office of Intelligence uses the HSI Framework for Criminal Analysis to conduct sophisticated and complex analysis of criminals and their networks in support of HSI investigations and investigative priorities.
The Office of Intelligence produces timely, comprehensive, and accurate criminal analysis that enables criminal investigators to identify, prioritize, disrupt, and dismantle transnational terrorist and criminal networks, and any other individual or organization that threatens national security or seeks to exploit the customs and immigration laws of the United States. The Office of Intelligence is also home to the agency’s protective intelligence team, classified communications program, and emergency management and continuity functions.