Training Days

Together, the FBI and its TOC-West vetted teams conduct bilateral investigations and operations that target every facet of transnational organized crime groups, including: 

• organizational leaders 
• people who launder money on these leaders’ behalf 
• “security” personnel and “enforcers” whose job it is to retaliate against individuals who agitate these criminal groups 
• violent crime perpetrators and facilitators 
• fentanyl traffickers and suppliers 

This innovative partnership with international law enforcement agencies lets us leverage those agencies’ in-country investigative authorities. And, Mike added, ongoing collaboration with “a core group of trusted partners” empowers the Bureau to combat transnational organized crime threats “in real time.” 

The FBI’s CID TOC-West ALAT in Guatemala agreed, noting that these partners lend “precision and local legitimacy” to FBI missions in cartel hotspots. 

“Their deep understanding of local terrain, laws, and criminal networks enables FBI agents to work effectively in complex environments,” the ALAT said. “Without their collaboration, the apprehension of key figures within transnational criminal organizations would be significantly more challenging—if not impossible.” 

In addition to their local expertise, these international partners’ professional acumen on their investigative beats also plays a crucial role in supporting TOC-West's efforts to counter cartels on foreign soil. 

For example, the deputy superintendent of the Colombian National Police—who also serves on an FBI vetted team—said his extensive experience surveilling criminals who helped move drugs across international borders taught him how “to anticipate their modus operandi, routes, and the steps they take when moving their drug shipments.”

“This insight enables me to guide field investigators, helping them carry out the major seizures we’ve successfully achieved,” the deputy superintendent said. 

“The ability to share intelligence, conduct parallel investigations, and conduct joint operations targeting transnational criminal organizations of mutual concern is invaluable,” said the FBI’s TOC-West ALAT in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. “Partnerships between vetted teams and the FBI enhance the FBI's ability to address transnational organized crime threats, making the U.S. safer and more secure.” 

And the support goes both ways. 

For instance, a member of our vetted team in Guatemala expressed gratitude to FBI officials for providing logistics, knowledge, expertise, and assistance with approaching and recruiting confidential human sources. This support, they said, has enabled the team to seize drugs, locate wanted subjects and execute extradition orders, and share intelligence with the FBI and other partners. 

The Bureau currently has six TOC-West vetted teams—one each in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, and two in Mexico. The FBI is also in the process of adding an additional team in Panama. The TOC West Operations Unit is considering further expansion elsewhere in Latin America. 
 
The Bureau considers multiple factors when choosing where to create new TOC-West vetted teams, including the location of priority threats and staffing. 

According to the TOC-West ALAT program coordinator, transnational organized crime activity has become increasingly globalized and interconnected. 

“Transnational organized crime actors are integrated and diversified,” Mike explained. “They don't respect arbitrary boundaries like national borders or administrative boundaries that the governments or law enforcement agencies may impose on themselves. They operate where they can profit, and that means we have to do the same thing.” 

For this reason, the TOC-West Vetted Team Program’s rapid expansion has been a direct response to the evolution of the threat. 

The FBI trains its TOC-West vetted teams as much as possible because it is critical to their safety and our shared success.  

Vetted team training exercises—hosted on the ground in partner countries and conducted in Spanish by bilingual instructors—educate our international law enforcement partners on how the FBI approaches investigations and conducts related activity. Trainings also review critical skillsets that can save their lives when they’re on the job. 

Medical care under fire is a prominent part of the training. The U.S. Department of Defense developed the training based on lessons learned from combat, Mike explained, and the Bureau and other federal law enforcement have adopted it. This training aims to empower vetted teams to keep injured individuals alive until they can be treated by a doctor or at a hospital. And, Mike recalled from his FBI Academy training, the quicker someone can get an injured person to a trauma center, the more likely they are to survive. 

For this reason, he added, every vetted team member receives a medical kit—the kind of resource that our international law enforcement partners might not otherwise have access to. “This helps everybody have the best chance possible to go home alive,” he said. 

The training exercises also cover the basics of firearms safety, marksmanship, and building good instincts to make split-second decisions wisely—such as how to react if someone unexpectedly draws a gun and starts shooting at you. “We make it individualized and vary the training by country and to make sure we're hitting the right training points” for each team’s needs, Mike said of this portion of the training. 

Additionally, vetted team members learn basic hand-to-hand combat skills—both to help them defend themselves without the use of a weapon and to empower them to more easily apprehend individuals who might resist arrest—and how to respond to attacks on vehicles they might be riding in.  

The instruction at these international training exercises is a team effort between Bureau personnel and U.S. Special Operations Command troops from the U.S. Army’s 7th Special Forces Group.  

“We've been very appreciative and grateful for the opportunity to work with U.S. Southern Command and the Department of Defense,” Mike said. “They do annual joint training internationally—one training in Central America, one in the Caribbean, and another one in South America. And so, we've partnered up with them since 2023 to bring our vetted teams and instructors to their exercises to cross-train our teams with other teams; to work with the 7th Special Forces Group; and to do firearms, tactics, and medical care together.” 

The Bureau aims to hold two or three of its own international trainings every year, with support from FBI’s International Operations Division and the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. These trainings cover the same ground as our bilateral trainings with DOD. 

And for the past two years, the Bureau has brought TOC-West vetted-team partners to the United States for a collective training opportunity at Quantico, Virginia, known as the Basic Investigator Course. The TOC-West Operations Unit hopes to continue this training annually.  

“It's important for interoperability that the training we provide is the same for everybody because we don't know when we're all going to be working together,” he said. 

The need for this kind of interoperability training was underscored by real-life tragedy when a member of the TOC-West vetted team in the Dominican Republic was killed in the line of duty while responding to an attempted robbery alongside FBI agents. He died while working to defend them and other civilians, Mike recalled. More recently, in 2024, two members of the Bureau’s vetted team in Colombia were ambushed, with one officer killed and the other wounded. Last month, representatives of IOD and CID presented the fallen officer’s family with the FBI Medal of Valor. 

“It's not just for camaraderie,” he said. “We don't know when we're all going to find ourselves in the same fight at the same time.”