# Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Tree An ASCII-art inventory of the **federal civilian officers authorized to carry firearms, make arrests, or both** — sorted by the department that employs them rather than by name recognition. The officer counts are the Bureau of Justice Statistics' Census of Federal Law Enforcement Officers for **fiscal year 2023**, published **May 2026**; it is the most recent full enumeration, and the only one. Seats are verified as of **September 19, 2026**. Two numbers describe this population and they are not describing the same thing. **Eighty-nine agencies** reported to the 2023 census — and **forty-two of them are Offices of Inspector General**, oversight shops that together hold **2.6%** of the officers. Meanwhile four agencies — [[CBP]], [[Bureau of Prisons]], [[FBI]] and [[ICE]] — hold **68%** of everyone else. The agency count that circulates in coverage ("around eighty federal law enforcement agencies") is mostly a count of inspectors general; the force is somewhere else entirely. This map draws both, because the gap between them is the structure. Built off the back of [[National Guard Federalization Flow]]. The Supreme Court's December 2025 order in [[Trump v. Illinois]] read "regular forces" in 10 U.S.C. § 12406(3) to mean the regular military rather than civilian federal officers — which means the 133,798 armed federal officers on this page are legally invisible to the statute that decides whether soldiers get sent into an American city. The vault had no inventory of that layer. This is it. Companions: [[Executive Branch Org Chart]] maps who runs what; [[DHS Component Tree]] and [[DOJ Component Tree]] map the two departments that hold 80% of this workforce; [[Inspector General Oversight Tree]] maps the oversight layer that turns out to be half the agency count. > [!note] How to read this chart > **●** = full-time officers with arrest authority, firearm authority, or both (BJS CFLEO, FY2023) · **§** = the statute that grants the authority · **⚑** = a structural point worth stopping on · **✕** = excluded from the census by design. Percentages are shares of the **130,279 non-OIG** officers unless marked otherwise; OIG officers are counted in their own branch. **No officeholders are named inside the fence** — turnover in these seats has been extreme, and the dated seat block below the chart carries them instead. Statutory cites are to the U.S. Code as in force September 2026. ``` FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES TREE — the armed, arrest-authorized civilian layer │ Legend: ● officers (BJS census, FY2023) § authorizing statute ⚑ structural point │ ✕ outside the census by design · counts published May 2026 · no officeholders by design │ ■ THERE IS NO FEDERAL POLICE FORCE │ ● 133,798 officers · 89 reporting agencies · no common chain of command, no common standard │ ⚑ NO GENERAL FEDERAL ARREST STATUTE EXISTS. Each agency's power comes from its own │ section of the code, enacted separately, on its own terms. 18 U.S.C. ch. 203 collects │ a handful of them; most of this tree is authorized somewhere else entirely. │ ⚑ 42 of the 89 agencies are Offices of Inspector General — 47% of the agency count, │ 2.6% of the officers. The agency number in circulation is mostly an oversight number. │ ├─◆ DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY .................... ● 64,889 49.8% of non-OIG total │ │ Created 2003. Now the largest federal law enforcement employer by a wide margin. │ │ │ ├─ U.S. Customs and Border Protection ............. ● 46,047 8 USC 1357 · 19 USC 1589a │ │ ⚑ ONE AGENCY HOLDS 35% OF ALL NON-OIG FEDERAL OFFICERS. Border Patrol, Office │ │ of Field Operations, Air and Marine Operations. Did not exist before 2003. │ ├─ U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ....... ● 12,318 8 USC 1357 │ │ └─ Homeland Security Investigations · Enforcement and Removal Operations │ ├─ U.S. Secret Service ............................ ● 5,588 18 USC 3056 │ ├─ Federal Protective Service ..................... ● 846 40 USC 1315 │ ├─ Transportation Security Admin. (investigations) ● 55 │ ├─ Office of the Chief Security Officer ........... ● 20 │ └─ Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers ....... ● 15 [trains most of this tree] │ ├─◆ DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE .............................. ● 40,566 31.1% of non-OIG total │ │ The department everyone pictures when they hear "federal law enforcement." │ │ It employs fewer officers than CBP and ICE do between them. │ │ │ ├─ Federal Bureau of Prisons ...................... ● 15,522 18 USC 3050 │ │ ⚑ DOJ's LARGEST LAW ENFORCEMENT COMPONENT IS A PRISON SYSTEM, and its arrest │ │ power is the narrowest on this page — escape, assault on staff, and offenses │ │ on BOP grounds. Down 9.3% since FY2020, the steepest DOJ decline. │ ├─ Federal Bureau of Investigation ................ ● 14,146 18 USC 3052 │ ├─ Drug Enforcement Administration ................ ● 4,234 21 USC 878 │ ├─ U.S. Marshals Service .......................... ● 4,014 28 USC 566 │ │ └─ ⚑ ALSO THE DEPUTATION DESK: § 566 special deputation extends federal arrest │ │ power to state, local and other federal officers on task forces. │ └─ Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Expl. . ● 2,650 18 USC 3051 │ └─ [FY2026 budget proposed folding ATF into DEA; House and Senate appropriators │ both rejected it, July 2025. ATF defended its own FY2027 request, May 2026.] │ ├─◆ JUDICIAL BRANCH .................................... ● 5,734 4.3% of ALL officers │ ├─ Admin. Office of U.S. Courts — Probation/Pretrial ● 5,557 │ │ ⚑ Down 29% since FY2020 — the largest percentage drop of any non-OIG agency. │ └─ Supreme Court of the United States Police ...... ● 177 │ ├─◆ LEGISLATIVE BRANCH ................................. ● 2,112 1.6% of ALL officers │ ├─ U.S. Capitol Police ............................ ● 2,055 2 USC 1966 │ └─ Government Publishing Office, Uniformed Police . ● 50 │ ├─◆ OTHER EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS ........................ ● 15,830 incl. their inspectors gen. │ │ The layer nobody counts: land agencies, tax police, building guards, park rangers. │ │ │ ├─ VETERANS AFFAIRS — Security and Law Enforcement ● 4,924 [up 25.5% since FY2020] │ ├─ INTERIOR ...................................... ● 2,947 │ │ ├─ National Park Service, Ranger Division ... ● 1,310 54 USC 102701 │ │ ├─ U.S. Park Police ......................... ● 528 │ │ ├─ U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ........... ● 441 │ │ ├─ Bureau of Indian Affairs ................. ● 355 │ │ └─ Bureau of Land Management ............... ● 313 43 USC 1733 │ ├─ TREASURY ...................................... ● 2,640 │ │ ├─ IRS Criminal Investigation ............... ● 2,143 26 USC 7608 │ │ ├─ U.S. Mint Police ......................... ● 281 │ │ └─ Bureau of Engraving and Printing Police .. ● 216 │ ├─ STATE — Bureau of Diplomatic Security ......... ● 1,283 22 USC 2709 │ ├─ WAR (DoD) — Pentagon Force Protection Agency .. ● 743 │ ├─ AGRICULTURE — Forest Service LE&I ............. ● 502 16 USC 559 │ ├─ ENERGY ........................................ ● 308 │ │ ├─ NNSA, Office of Secure Transportation ... ● 281 │ │ └─ Office of Special Operations ............ ● 27 │ ├─ COMMERCE ...................................... ● 293 │ │ ├─ NOAA, Office of Law Enforcement ......... ● 138 │ │ ├─ BIS, Office of Export Enforcement ....... ● 132 │ │ └─ Office of Security ...................... ● 23 │ ├─ HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES ..................... ● 286 │ │ ├─ FDA, Office of Criminal Investigations .. ● 218 │ │ └─ National Institutes of Health Police .... ● 68 │ ├─ LABOR — Division of Protective Operations ..... ● 18 │ └─ TRANSPORTATION — Odometer Fraud Investigation . ● 6 │ ├─◆ INDEPENDENT AND QUASI-GOVERNMENTAL ................. ● 4,311 3.2% of ALL officers │ ├─ U.S. Postal Inspection Service ................. ● 1,682 18 USC 3061 │ ├─ Smithsonian Institution, Protection Services ... ● 519 │ ├─ Amtrak Police Department ....................... ● 409 │ ├─ EPA, Criminal Investigation Division ........... ● 170 18 USC 3063 │ ├─ Federal Reserve Police ......................... ● 122 [first reported in 2023] │ ├─ Tennessee Valley Authority Police .............. ● 71 │ └─ NASA, Office of Protective Services ............ ● 62 │ ├─◆ THE OVERSIGHT LAYER — 42 OFFICES OF INSPECTOR GENERAL ● 3,519 2.6% of ALL officers │ │ Half the agency count. One fortieth of the force. And the only branch of this tree │ │ whose arrest power belongs to somebody outside it. │ │ │ ├─ Largest: U.S. Postal Service OIG ● 461 · HHS OIG ● 458 · War (DoD) OIG ● 382 │ │ TIGTA ● 253 · Social Security Admin. OIG ● 245 · DHS OIG ● 217 │ ├─ Smallest: Library of Congress OIG ● 3 · Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. OIG ● 2 │ │ │ ├─ § THE AUTHORITY IS THE ATTORNEY GENERAL'S — 5 U.S.C. § 406(f) │ │ (f)(1) An IG, an Assistant IG for Investigations, and supervised special agents │ │ "may be authorized BY THE ATTORNEY GENERAL" to carry firearms, arrest │ │ without warrant, and seek and execute warrants. │ │ (f)(2) He may do so only on a three-part determination: the office is │ │ "significantly hampered" without the powers · other agencies' help is │ │ insufficient · adequate internal safeguards exist. │ │ (f)(3) TWENTY-FIVE named offices are exempt from that initial determination. │ │ Every other OIG — including the largest, the Postal Service's — is not. │ │ (f)(5) He may RESCIND OR SUSPEND the powers: for a whole office, or for one │ │ named individual agent. │ │ (f)(6) ⚑ "A determination by the Attorney General under paragraph (2) or (5) │ │ SHALL NOT BE REVIEWABLE IN OR BY ANY COURT." │ │ (f)(8) None of it limits Marshals Service special deputation, which runs parallel. │ │ │ └─ ⚑ So the investigators assigned to find wrongdoing inside the executive branch │ carry guns and make arrests at the discretion of the executive branch's chief │ prosecutor, under a decision no judge may look at. Down 6% since FY2020. │ ├─◆ ✕ OUTSIDE THE CENSUS BY DESIGN — not a gap in the data, a boundary in the definition │ ├─ ✕ The U.S. Armed Forces — Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force │ ├─ ✕ THE U.S. COAST GUARD — an armed service, therefore excluded, despite holding │ │ the broadest maritime search, seizure and arrest power in the code (14 USC 522) │ ├─ ✕ The Central Intelligence Agency, and other confidentiality-restricted agencies │ ├─ ✕ The Federal Air Marshal Service — excluded for security reasons │ ├─ ✕ FEMA's Mount Weather Police Department — officer count not collected │ ├─ ✕ Every federal officer stationed outside the United States │ └─ ✕ Five eligible agencies simply did not respond, and BJS found no public data │ to substitute. Response rate 89 of 94 eligible agencies, 95%. │ └─◆ ⚑ THE LINES MOVE WITHOUT CONGRESS — three doors between the branches above │ ├─ 1. CROSS-DESIGNATION AS IMMIGRATION OFFICERS — 8 U.S.C. § 1103(a)(4), (6) │ The Secretary of Homeland Security may designate other federal officers as │ immigration officers. Used in April 2025 to designate Marshals Service, DEA, │ BOP and ATF personnel, and any other DOJ employee the Attorney General approves │ — stated as giving them the authority the FBI already had. One memo; no statute. │ ├─ 2. MARSHALS SERVICE SPECIAL DEPUTATION — 28 U.S.C. § 566 │ Federal arrest power extended to state, local, tribal and other federal officers │ for task-force work. The mechanism by which a city detective acts federally. │ └─ 3. THE § 287(g) AGREEMENT — 8 U.S.C. § 1357(g) The reverse direction: state and local officers performing immigration enforcement functions under a written agreement with DHS. ⚑ Read together with the OIG branch: the arrest authority in this tree is far less fixed than a department-by-department chart suggests. Who may arrest whom, for what, is adjusted by memorandum at both ends — and at the oversight end, unreviewably. ``` **Seats as of September 19, 2026** — verified at build time; every one of these has turned over at least once since January 2025. | Office | Holder | Since | |---|---|---| | Attorney General | Todd Blanche | confirmed 50–49, 8 Aug 2026; sworn 10 Aug 2026 (acting from 2 Apr 2026) | | Secretary of Homeland Security | Markwayne Mullin | confirmed 54–45, 23 Mar 2026; sworn 24 Mar 2026 | | Director, FBI | Kash Patel | 20 Feb 2025 | | Administrator, DEA | Terrance C. Cole | 24 Jul 2025 | | Director, ATF | Robert Cekada | confirmed 29 Apr 2026; sworn 30 Apr 2026 | | Director, U.S. Marshals Service | Gadyaces S. Serralta | confirmed 59–39, 31 Jul 2025 | | Director, Bureau of Prisons | William K. Marshall III | 21 Apr 2025 | | Commissioner, CBP | Rodney S. Scott | 2025 | | Director, ICE | David Venturella *(acting)* | 1 Jun 2026 | | Director, U.S. Secret Service | Sean M. Curran | 22 Jan 2025 | | Chief, IRS Criminal Investigation | Jarod Koopman | 11 Apr 2026 | ## Notes - **The counts are FY2023 and the report is May 2026 — that gap is the data, not a defect in it.** The Census of Federal Law Enforcement Officers has run periodically since 1993; the FY2023 round was published 20 May 2026 as NCJ 311643. No more recent enumeration exists, which means **no published figure captures the 2025–26 hiring surge at CBP and ICE or the separations elsewhere**. Anyone citing a current headcount for a federal agency is citing the agency, not a census. Nothing on this page is adjusted forward. - **130,279 versus 133,798.** The larger number is every officer including the 3,519 in Offices of Inspector General. The smaller is everyone else. Percentages in the fence are marked to whichever base they use, because mixing them is how the "four agencies hold two-thirds" claim gets overstated elsewhere. - **The four-agency concentration, exactly.** CBP 46,047 + Bureau of Prisons 15,522 + FBI 14,146 + ICE 12,318 = **88,033 of 130,279 non-OIG officers, 67.6%**. DHS alone employs 49.8% of the non-OIG total and 48.7% of all federal officers. - **⚑ Why "there is no federal police force" is a structural claim and not a slogan.** Nothing in this tree shares a chain of command below the President, a common use-of-force standard, a common training requirement, or a single statute. BJS found **7% of agencies authorize carotid holds and 6% authorize neck restraints** — a range that only exists because each agency writes its own policy. [[FLETC]] trains most of them, which is the closest thing to a unifying institution, and it is a training center with 15 officers of its own. - **⚑ The oversight layer's authority is revocable and unreviewable.** 5 U.S.C. § 406(f) was enacted as § 812(a) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and recodified by Pub. L. 117–286 in December 2022. The twenty-five offices exempt from the initial determination at (f)(3) are the departmental OIGs plus USAID, EPA, FDIC, FEMA, GSA, NASA, NRC, OPM, RRB, SBA, SSA and TVA. **The Postal Service OIG — the largest OIG law enforcement workforce in the government at 461 officers — is not on that list.** Whether any particular OIG relies on § 406(f) rather than a separate statutory grant was not verified agency by agency at build time and is not asserted here; the structure of the provision is. - **⚑ The Coast Guard exclusion is worth sitting with.** [[United States Coast Guard]] holds the broadest search, seizure and arrest authority in the U.S. Code — 14 U.S.C. § 522 reaches any vessel subject to U.S. jurisdiction, on the high seas, without a warrant — and appears nowhere in the federal law enforcement census, because the census excludes the armed services and the Coast Guard is one. It is simultaneously a military service and the country's principal maritime police force, and the statistical system can only see one of those at a time. - **The ATF–DEA merger is proposed, blocked, and not dead.** A March 2025 DOJ memo proposed consolidating the two; it appeared in the FY2026 budget request. **The House blocked it in a July 2025 appropriations proposal and Senate appropriators rejected it on 18 July 2025.** ATF's director defended a standalone FY2027 request at a Senate Appropriations hearing in May 2026, so the agency remains separate. Current appropriations law requires congressional approval for the merger. - **Statutory cites in the fence are the ones verified at build time.** Agencies shown without a `§` were not given one rather than given a guess. The pattern holds regardless: [[Congress]] granted this authority one agency at a time, across at least nine titles of the code. - **"Department of War" is a secondary title, not a rename.** BJS uses it in the FY2023 tables on the authority of [[Executive Order 14347]]. Every statute cited on this page still says Defense. Carried here to match the source table, flagged so the table is not mistaken for a codification. - **What this map deliberately omits:** military police and the service criminal investigative organizations (NCIS, CID, OSI), which are outside the census by the same rule that excludes the Coast Guard; the intelligence community's collection arms, mapped at [[Intelligence Community Tree]]; state and local law enforcement entirely; and any judgment about whether any of these agencies should exist or be larger. ## See also - [[Executive Branch Org Chart]] — who runs what; this maps who is armed - [[DHS Component Tree]] · [[DOJ Component Tree]] — the two departments holding 80% of this workforce - [[Inspector General Oversight Tree]] — the oversight layer that is half the agency count here - [[National Guard Federalization Flow]] — the statute that does not count any of these officers - [[Federal Workforce Structure Tree]] — the services and protections these officers sit inside - [[Immigration Removal Pipeline]] — where CBP and ICE officers are actually deployed - [[Posse Comitatus Act]] · [[Insurrection Act]] — the limits that apply to soldiers and not to this tree - [[Federal Agencies Hub]] · [[Foundations Hub]]