FBI's 'Operation Summer Heat 2.0' Reaches Halfway Point With 1,500 Arrests, 120 Children Located

The FBI says the campaign's first half has disrupted violent criminal networks through coordinated raids, drug interdictions and partnerships with federal, state and local agencies.

Rudy Blalock

Published: 7/16/2026, 5:26:13 AM EDT

FBI's 'Operation Summer Heat 2.0' Reaches Halfway Point With 1,500 Arrests, 120 Children Located — Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel listens as Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks during a news conference at the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice building in Washington on April 21, 2026. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

At its midpoint, the FBI's second annual nationwide crime crackdown has yielded more than 1,500 violent offender arrests, nearly 600 kilograms of seized cocaine, and the location of over 120 children, bureau officials said Tuesday.

FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the milestone figures for the enforcement initiative, known as Operation Summer Heat 2.0, which has engaged all 56 of the bureau's field offices across the United States. The FBI said in a post on X that agents have also completed more than 850 drug seizures since the operation commenced.

"All 56 FBI field offices nationwide are fully engaged in Summer Heat 2.0 crushing violent crime networks across the country — and at the formal halfway mark, we've already arrested over 1,500 violent offenders, conducted 850 drug seizures, recovered 590 kilos of cocaine, and located more than 120 children," Patel said in an exclusive with Breitbart News. "This is the life-saving, righteous mission this FBI and this administration are dedicated to — and the results speak for themselves."

The operation is a successor to last summer's Operation Summer Heat, which was led by then-Deputy Director Dan Bongino. Patel has expanded the program's scope and scale. "The historic Operation Summer Heat led by Dan Bongino paved the way for the most prolific run of crime reduction in American history, and this FBI is doubling down," Patel said.

The opening phase of Summer Heat 2.0 began June 2 in the Pittsburgh field office's jurisdiction, the FBI said at the time. That initial push—dubbed Operation Turf War—was a joint effort between the FBI Pittsburgh Field Office's Eastern Panhandle Drug and Violent Crime Task Force and West Virginia's Homeland Security Task Force, targeting a drug trafficking organization operating across two states. The takedown resulted in 32 narcotics- and weapons-related arrests in West Virginia and Maryland.

"Operation Turf War was this FBI answering the call of a community that needed it the most," Patel said at the time of the Pittsburgh-area effort. "This was a massively successful operation right in West Virginia with nearly three dozen individuals arrested using sophisticated techniques, confidential informants, and precise collaboration across the entire FBI enterprise with our partners. This is exactly what partnerships are supposed to look like."

The FBI also noted a forensic achievement tied to Operation Turf War—the first-ever large-scale deployment of the bureau's Rapid DNA system to the Pittsburgh area of responsibility, marking only the third such deployment in FBI history. The technology allows agents to develop a DNA profile from a mouth swab within two hours and cross-reference it against unsolved crimes in the FBI's Combined DNA Index System within a day, without requiring a laboratory or human review.