Justice Department announces focus on crimes and missing people in Native American areas

The U.S. Justice Department announced Tuesday that it will surge FBI assets across the country to address unresolved violent crimes in areas with high Native American populations, including crimes related to missing and murdered Indigenous people.

The FBI will send 60 personnel, rotating in 90-day temporary duty assignments over a six-month period. A news release described the effort as “Operation Not Forgotten” and said it will be “the longest and most intense national deployment of FBI resources to address Indian Country crime to date.”

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FBI personnel will support field offices in Albuquerque; Denver; Detroit; Jackson, Mississippi; Minneapolis; Oklahoma City; Phoenix; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; and Salt Lake City. The FBI will work in partnership with other federal and tribal law enforcement agencies across jurisdictions, the Justice Department said, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs Missing and Murdered Unit.

The territory of the FBI’s Minneapolis office includes South Dakota. The U.S. attorney for the state, Alison Ramsdell, said in the news release that “these additional resources will aid in our effort to hold offenders accountable and achieve justice on behalf of victims.”

At the beginning of fiscal year 2025, the FBI’s Indian Country program had approximately 4,300 open investigations, including over 900 death investigations, 1,000 child abuse investigations, and more than 500 domestic violence and adult sexual abuse investigations, according to the news release.

“Crime rates in American Indian and Alaska Native communities are unacceptably high,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in the release. “By surging FBI resources and collaborating closely with U.S. attorneys and tribal law enforcement to prosecute cases, the Department of Justice will help deliver the accountability that these communities deserve.”

FBI director Kash Patel said in the news release that “the FBI will manhunt violent criminals on all lands” and also “find those who have gone missing.”