Blue Lotus, Four Horsemen, Hydra and Pelican Bones: How the US fights the fentanyl crisis

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.

But 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. 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.

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.

The hearing was particularly timely, because the U.S. is facing intensifying urgency to stop the worsening fentanyl epidemic.

Drug deaths nationwide hit a record 109,680 in 2022, according to preliminary data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 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.

By 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. 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.

The code names allow the U.S. government to focus various elements of an investigation, or a broader interagency process, toward one goal, officials say. They’re instrumental in marshaling all of the disparate threads of evidence and intelligence together, often from various filing and information-sharing systems. And they can help unify often-feuding agencies and dedicate their efforts toward the greater goal of keeping Americans safe.

“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.

Kelly became known within federal law enforcement for creating appropriately named investigative initiatives that caught the attention of the White House, attorney general and top lawmakers. His Project Cassandra honored the Trojan priestess fated to utter true prophecies but never to be believed as part of Kelly's efforts to raise alarms about the convergence of drug trafficking and terrorism.

“You would hope it would also be a motivating factor for them to take each others' cases into consideration instead of just doing what's best for their own case," Kelly said. "You know, for the greater good.”

Some of the names of the major fentanyl operations by the Department of Homeland Security were revealed at the House Border Security and Enforcement Subcommittee hearing. Rep. Lou Correa of California said he wanted to bring them up to get a sense of how DHS is attacking the crisis from various directions.

"This is an excellent sign that we actually have people on the ground that understand the facts and are engaged in solving each and every aspect of the challenge in front of us, which is whether it's money laundering or it's the actual fentanyl trafficking," Correa said in an interview Friday. "Because the challenge that we have is that this thing is massive."

Operations Blue Lotus and Four Horsemen: These Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, initiatives resulted in the seizure of nearly 10,000 pounds of fentanyl headed for U.S. communities and led to 284 arrests. “I understand that the department has used the insights gained from these two operations to launch the next phase of its campaign to target and prevent fentanyl from entering the United States,” Correa said.

Operation Artemis and Operation Rolling Wave: These are two newer CBP operations leveraging the intelligence gained through Blue Lotus and Four Horsemen. This next phase of the fentanyl battle will consist of "jump teams" deployed at strategic locations around the U.S., with a focus on disrupting the supply chain for the development and movement of fentanyl − especially its precursor chemicals used to manufacture it. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas announced the operation in June.

HSI, the Homeland Security Department's main investigative agency, also will continue monitoring U.S. ports of entry, where 90% of fentanyl is trafficked primarily in cars and trucks, while also increasing its coordination of operations to target the fentanyl supply chain under Blue Lotus 2.0.

On Thursday, Mayorkas − visiting DHS contraband interdiction operations at the International Mail Facility at JFK International Airport in New York − said that Operation Artemis has stopped more than 5,000 pounds of precursor chemicals used in the production of fentanyl in just its first few weeks. He said agents working on Artemis have seized more than 60 pill presses and pill molds , more than 300 pounds of methamphetamine and at least 5,000 pounds of other drugs.

“Operation Artemis is surging our personnel to interdict the flow of precursor chemicals, as well as the equipment used to manufacture methamphetamine," Mayorkas said. "We are using all of our resources, all of our capabilities, and our tremendous creativity to guarantee traffickers will not get ahead of us."

Operation Argus: This operation is a new Customs and Border Protection initiative to run a parallel intelligence and analysis operation to Operations Blue Lotus 2.0 and Artemis and provide trade-focused analysis in support of them.

Operation Pelican Bones: The initiative by DHS’s Homeland Security Investigations division seeks to disrupt the financial tools used by transnational criminal organizations to launder money. Lawmakers and law enforcement officials said that to take down the cartels and transnational criminal organizations that enable them, authorities need to go after their profits and supply chains, not just the drugs themselves. HSI falls under ICE, or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, within DHS.

Operation Hydra: Another HSI effort that uses computer-based analytic tools to go after cartels' chemical supplies, targets equipment needed to manufacture pills, and goes after additional personnel deployed at express consignment facilities.

Operation Chain Breaker: This is an effort to target the equipment needed to manufacture the black-market pills flooding U.S. communities from coast to coast after being produced in industrial-sized Mexican cartel “superlabs” south of the border. It also will deploy additional agents at express consignment facilities.

“Initiatives like these are critical to dismantle illicit networks and limit TCOs’ financial access,” Correa said, using an acronym to describe transnational criminal organizations like the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels.

During the hearing, Correa and the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., introduced the bipartisan Cooperation on Combatting Human Smuggling and Trafficking Act, which would direct Homeland Security Investigations to expand its Transnational Criminal Investigative Units.

“These vetted and trained units of foreign law enforcement work with HSI to investigate transnational criminal organizations, aiming to stop human smuggling and the flow of dangerous drugs before they reach our borders,” Correa said.

Another operation not mentioned at last Wednesday’s hearing reflects the broader nature of some of the operations, including joint DHS-Justice Department efforts:

Operation Sentinel: A major initiative launched in 2021 by Mayorkas to focus on the transnational criminal organizations that smuggle migrants into the U.S. as well as drugs.

Operation Sentinel is a collaborative anti-smuggling initiative between three DHS entities − HSI, CBP and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services − and the State Department; and the FBI and DEA, which fall under the Justice Department.

“Smuggling operations continue to lie and exploit vulnerable populations to promote their criminal enterprise – the health and safety of migrants does not influence their lucrative ambition,” top CBP official Troy Miller said. The operation "is designed to disrupt every facet of the logistical network of these criminal organizations."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: US to fentanyl traffickers: Watch out for Hydra, Blue Lotus and Pelican Bones