An FBI surge of agents and analysts into Indian Country this spring and summer led to 118 arrests and federal charges against 41 people, the Justice Department announced Tuesday, more than doubling last year's arrest count as investigators pressed unresolved violent crime cases on tribal lands.
The deployment, known as Operation Not Forgotten and now in its fourth year, ran from April 1 through Sept. 30. It gave priority to violence against women and children, including cases of people who are missing or were killed. The surge supported 548 case investigations, a 59% increase over 2025, according to the department, and agents conducted 990 interviews and 232 search operations. They recovered 72 weapons and identified or located 25 child victims. Arrests rose 123% from last year, and the number of people charged federally rose 52%.
Investigators, intelligence staff and other personnel rotated through temporary assignments in 12 FBI field offices, among them Albuquerque, Billings, Minneapolis, Phoenix and Salt Lake City, and worked with tribal police, the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Missing and Murdered Unit and U.S. attorneys' offices.
"The Department of Justice will always work to deliver justice for the victims of violent crime in Indian country," Attorney General Todd Blanche said. FBI Director Kash Patel said this year's operation continued "this FBI's largest commitment to Indian Country in the history of the Bureau" and that the bureau's "long-forgotten partners in Indian Country are forgotten no more."
The surge ran alongside a wider FBI campaign, Operation Steadfast Promise, which the department said builds on Operation Not Forgotten with several new initiatives. Since that effort began in April, the bureau has opened more than 1,200 new investigations in Indian Country, obtained charges against 678 people, made more than 700 arrests and recovered 2,260 weapons, the department said. Patel cited 400 agents assigned to Indian Country and 30 Safe Trails Task Forces, and said the FBI had quadrupled its rewards, to at least $25,000, for information about homicides, kidnappings and missing persons there. The bureau adopted that reward floor in August for publicly advertised cases in which it has taken jurisdiction.
The biggest district tally among the department's examples came from Wyoming, where it said the surge led to federal indictments of 18 people for violent crimes and child abuse offenses on the Wind River Indian Reservation. One of them is Jose Benito Ocon, 34, who faces five felony counts, including first-degree murder. Prosecutors allege that during a car ride on the reservation near Riverton in August 2025 he shot a man in the head and then pointed the gun at two women in the vehicle. A first-degree murder conviction would carry a mandatory life sentence.
The indictment the department cited is the second against Ocon. His first was among nine felony indictments that Wyoming's three federal judges dismissed on May 15 after concluding that misconduct by Darin Smith, then the interim U.S. attorney, had tainted the grand jury proceedings, Cowboy State Daily reported last week. Smith's office had argued that some of his remarks were "ill advised" but had not unfairly swayed the grand jury. The dismissals were without prejudice, and all nine defendants were indicted again; Ocon's new indictment was filed less than a week later. His case is on hold until mental health evaluations are finished, and his lawyer has notified the court that he intends to rely on an insanity defense. The Senate confirmed Smith days after the dismissals, and he remains Wyoming's U.S. attorney.
Federal prosecutors handle many serious felony cases from Wind River, and the Northern Arapaho Business Council warned in May that Native victims and families bear the cost when those prosecutions go wrong. "The people of the Wind River Reservation deserve better," the council said. On Sept. 29, the FBI announced that it had sent additional agents, analysts and a victim specialist to the reservation under Operation Steadfast Promise.
Elsewhere, the department pointed to a superseding indictment returned in July in Nevada that charges Delshay Astor in the February 2022 killing of Anna Scott, a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, on the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, and charges Joel Christy with helping Astor avoid arrest. In Minnesota, four cases were filed during the surge, among them a Sept. 22 indictment of Courtney John Barrett Sr. on two counts of sexual abuse of a minor. Arizona prosecutors charged at least four cases from the Navajo Nation, including an arson and the aggravated sexual abuse of a child under 12, along with an assault on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. The charges are accusations, and every defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
The department also pointed to the size of the caseload that remains. This year's operation, it said, was working against more than 4,000 open investigations in Indian Country, including death investigations and cases of child abuse, domestic violence and sexual abuse of adults.