DEA is the nation’s federal agency dedicated to drug law enforcement and accordingly, works to disrupt and dismantle the leadership, command, control, and financial infrastructure of major drug-trafficking organizations. DEA’s Office of Operations Management is charged with supporting the domestic drug enforcement activities of DEA’s 21 field divisions, which each have a corresponding field office with a DEA Special Agent in Charge (SAC) assigned. (See fig. 1.) Each field division has Assistant Special Agents in Charge (ASAC) and Group Supervisors who assist the SAC with managing the entire division, including its smaller field offices headed by a Resident Agent in Charge (RAC). Formed in 2003 as a part of the U.S. government’s response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, ICE’s primary mission is to promote homeland security and public safety through the enforcement of federal laws governing border control, customs, trade, and immigration. ICE’s office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) investigates immigration crime; human rights violations and human smuggling; smuggling of narcotics, weapons, and other types of contraband; financial crimes; cybercrime; and export enforcement issues. An important part of ICE’s overall mission, drug-smuggling investigations, made up approximately 22-24 percent— one of the largest investigative categories—of ICE’s total reported investigative hours for fiscal years 2006-2009. Within HSI, the Narcotics and Contraband Smuggling Unit is responsible for overseeing matters related to counternarcotics investigations with a connection to the border, including the implementation of the 2009 Agreement. ICE’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis also has an important role in ensuring that counternarcotics information is shared with the appropriate organizations. ICE has 26 field offices in the United States headed by SACs who are responsible for the administration and management of all investigative and enforcement activities, including counternarcotics, within the geographic boundaries of each office. (See fig.1.) Similar to DEA’s field office leadership, ICE also has ASACs and Group Supervisors to assist with managing the SAC field office and its smaller offices headed by a RAC. Both the 1994 and 2009 Agreements contain key provisions defining ICE’s authority to conduct counternarcotics investigations. ICE is authorized to investigate all immigration and customs violations except those involving narcotics; therefore, ICE has to request Title 21 authority from DEA to investigate counternarcotics cases that have a connection to a border or port of entry. In March 2009, we reported that DEA’s and ICE’s cross-designation procedures under the 1994 Agreement were problematic, due in part to misplaced cross-designation requests and the cap set in conjunction with the 1994 Agreement limiting the number of cross-designated agents to 1,475 agents. According to ICE headquarters officials, this cap limited ICE’s ability to accomplish its mission because agents who were not cross-designated could not pursue border-related drug-smuggling investigations into the United States. We recommended that the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security develop a new agreement or other mechanism to, among other things, provide efficient procedures for cross-designating ICE agents to conduct counternarcotics investigations. Aligned with our March 2009 report recommendation, the 2009 Agreement changed the process for cross-designating ICE agents with Title 21 authority to investigate counternarcotics cases in that ICE can now select an unlimited number of agents for cross-designation. In addition, a consolidated list of prospective and approved ICE agents is exchanged at the ICE Assistant Secretary and DEA Administrator levels instead of by the field office SACs. The 2009 Agreement retained the 1994 Agreement’s provision requiring the DEA and ICE field office SACs to designate an ASAC as the Title 21 Coordinator to manage Title 21 matters. According to ICE Narcotics and Contraband Smuggling Unit and DEA Operations Management officials, the Title 21 Coordinators are to process and review cross-designation requests at the field office level. The 2009 Agreement also addressed our March 2009 recommendations by specifying that ICE participate fully in and staff the Fusion Center and the Special Operations Division. The Fusion Center is a Justice-led interagency organization that collects and analyzes drug-trafficking and related financial information and disseminates investigative leads. The Special Operations Division is a DEA-led interagency organization established to target the command and control capabilities of major drug- trafficking organizations. The Agreement also requires ICE to: commit fully to sharing all investigative reports and records from open and closed investigations, including those related to drugs, money laundering, bulk cash smuggling and financial crimes, gangs, and weapons; and  provide and, in turn, have access to data related to all seizures of money, drugs, and firearms, including date of seizure, type of contraband, amount, place of seizure, and geographically based data, when known, to the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC). This center is a DEA-led tactical intelligence center that provides federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies information they can use in investigations and operations that target drug smuggling and other criminal activities. Additionally, the 2009 Agreement states that “ICE intends to participate and share information to the same extent as other major federal partners in the Fusion Center and Special Operations Division, to include sharing information not yet entered into the shared databases.” The 1994 and 2009 Agreements also address ICE’s (legacy Customs) authority to pursue counternarcotics investigations. According to the 1994 Agreement, ICE’s (legacy Customs) drug-related investigations are “restricted to individuals and organizations involved in the smuggling of controlled substances across U.S. international borders or through Ports of Entry.” In contrast, the 2009 Agreement provides that cross-designated ICE agents will be authorized to investigate narcotics smuggling with a clearly articulable nexus to the United States border or port of entry––only illegal drug importation/exportation schemes, including the activities to transport and stage the drugs within the United States or between the source or destination country and the United States. The Agreement states that an investigation does not have a nexus simply because at one time the narcotics crossed the border or came through a port of entry. The justification for a nexus also cannot be based solely on a buyer who purchased drugs from a cross-border smuggler. In addition, unless authorized as part of a task force or at the request of DEA, ICE agents are not to investigate cases of solely domestic production, sale, transportation, or shipment of narcotics. As we reported in our 2009 report, collaboration and coordination between the two agencies are important because of their overlapping responsibilities and the need to operate across agencies while avoiding duplicative investigations and more importantly, ensuring officer safety. We found in the 2009 report that while senior DEA and ICE officials in certain field offices had established positive working relationships, there was a need to institutionalize consistent practices at all locations. Our report also underscored that positive working relationships between DEA and ICE counterparts did not exist at all locations, resulting in the likelihood of duplication between agencies and incidents that could threaten law enforcement officer safety. The 2009 Agreement addresses how DEA and ICE are to work together to stop the flow of narcotics into the United States by outlining both agencies’ cross-designation, information-sharing, and deconfliction responsibilities. DEA and ICE have taken actions to implement the 2009 Agreement’s provisions. The agencies have implemented the Agreement’s cross- designation provisions through a revised process that is more streamlined and has resulted in enhanced flexibility in maximizing investigative resources, according to ICE Narcotics and Contraband Smuggling Unit officials. ICE has also implemented the Agreement’s Fusion Center and Special Operations Division information-sharing provisions by sharing required data with these organizations. Further, ICE is working to complete the transfer of data to the El Paso Intelligence Center. Additionally, DEA and ICE developed and implemented local deconfliction protocols and used a variety of mechanisms to deconflict counternarcotics investigations in accordance with the Agreement. DEA and ICE headquarters and field office management officials interviewed generally reported that the implementation of the Agreement and local deconfliction protocols had generally improved deconfliction. ICE took actions that fully implemented the cross-designation provisions of the 2009 Agreement, which revised the cross-designation provisions found in the 1994 Agreement, as illustrated in table 1. Specifically, the 2009 Agreement changed the levels at which the requests are processed and approved, from the field office SAC level to the Assistant Secretary (ICE) and Administrator (DEA) level, which has eliminated a step in ICE’s internal review of the requests. Additionally, to comply with the provisions of the 2009 Agreement, ICE and DEA modified the process for making and reviewing requests for cross-designating agents by consolidating the requests into one updated list for approval that ICE submits to DEA twice a year. Accordingly, DEA now provides ICE with one memorandum approving the ICE agents listed for cross- designation authority. Previously, under the 1994 Agreement, ICE and DEA exchanged individual requests and approvals. The cross-designation process was also streamlined in other ways under the 2009 Agreement, as depicted in figure 2. The ICE field offices submit their cross-designation lists to ICE’s Narcotics and Contraband Smuggling Unit and Assistant Secretary in headquarters for review. The ICE Assistant Secretary provides this list to the DEA Administrator for review. DEA Operations Management officials request that the DEA field office SACs then review the list to ensure that the ICE agents listed have counternarcotics duties, such as serving on task forces or other interagency groups that investigate counternarcotics cases. Next, the DEA field offices are to pass the reviewed list back to headquarters for review and approval from DEA’s Administrator.