Washington, D.C.
FBI National Press Office
(202) 324-3691
February 16, 2022

Luis M. Quesada Named Assistant Director of the Criminal Investigative Division

Director Christopher Wray has named Luis M. Quesada as the assistant director of the Criminal Investigative Division at FBI Headquarters in Washington. Mr. Quesada most recently served as a deputy assistant director of the Critical Incident Response Group.

Mr. Quesada joined the FBI as a special agent in 1995 and investigated violent crimes out of the Miami Field Office. He transferred to work violent crimes in the San Juan Field Office in Puerto Rico in 1998, and returned to Miami in 2001 to work drug investigations. He served on the SWAT team in Miami and in San Juan.

In 2003, Mr. Quesada transferred to the Terrorist Screening Center under the Counterterrorism Division as a supervisory special agent. He moved to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, in 2005 to teach defensive tactics. In 2007, he returned to Miami as the supervisor of the violent gang and high-intensity drug trafficking area task force.

In 2010, Mr. Quesada was named the assistant legal attaché in Buenos Aires, Argentina, responsible for promoting FBI interests there and in Paraguay and Uruguay. In 2012, he was promoted to unit chief in the Criminal Investigative Division at FBI Headquarters, overseeing the Bureau’s counternarcotics efforts in Latin America and the U.S. Southwest border. Mr. Quesada was named legal attaché of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 2014, and focused on counterterrorism threats throughout the Balkans.

Mr. Quesada was promoted in 2015 to assistant special agent in charge of the Criminal Branch of the Jackson Field Office in Mississippi. He was named an assistant section chief in the Training Division in 2017, before being promoted to chief of the division’s Training Services Section in 2018.

In 2019, Director Wray named Mr. Quesada the special agent in charge of the El Paso Field Office in Texas. He was promoted to the deputy assistant director of the Critical Incident Response Group in 2021.

Prior to joining the FBI, Mr. Quesada was a police officer for the Miami Police Department. He earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies from Florida International University.