A.J. Collazo was appointed as Special Agent in Charge of the Caribbean Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on September 25, 2017. As the Special Agent in Charge, Mr. Collazo is responsible for the Domestic Offices in San Juan, Ponce, Fajardo and Aguadilla, Puerto Rico and St. Thomas and St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In addition, he is responsible for DEA’s foreign offices in Bridgetown, Barbados; Curacao, Netherlands Antilles; Georgetown, Guyana; Kingston, Jamaica; Nassau and Freeport, Bahamas; Port-Au-Prince, Haiti; Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Mr. Collazo previously served as an Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) from November 2015 to November 2017. In that role, he served as an ASAC in the Miami Division; Mr. Collazo was responsible for the Enforcement groups assigned to the South Florida High Intensity Drug Area Task Force (HIDTA).

From August 2012 to November 2015, Mr. Collazo served as an Assistant Regional Director (ARD) in DEA’s Andean Region with responsibility over the Quito Country Office, the Guayaquil Resident Office in Ecuador and the Caracas Country Office in Venezuela.

From January 2009 to August 2012, Mr. Collazo served as a Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) at the Panama Express Strike Force in Tampa, Florida. As such, Mr. Collazo was responsible for coordination between DEA, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Joint Inter-Agency Task Force–South (JIATF-S) elements and DEA’s foreign office regarding the investigation of organizations responsible for the Maritime transportation of multi-ton shipments of cocaine to the United States.

Mr. Collazo has also served in a variety of other positions within DEA, including Staff Coordinator at the Special Operations Division (SOD), Special Agent at the Bilateral Investigations Unit (BIU) at the Special Operations Division in Washington DC and as a Special Agent in the Orlando District Office.

Mr. Collazo began his career with DEA after graduating from the DEA Academy in 1997 in the Miami Division’ Orlando District Office, where he worked numerous investigations. Mr. Collazo was assigned to several Enforcement and Task Force groups to include the HIDTA Heroin Task Force (HTF). While assigned to the HIDTA HTF, he worked on several complex conspiracy cases to include one case, which netted the seizure of 50 kilograms of heroin, over 30 defendants and a Lear Jet that was used to shuttle multi-kilogram quantities of heroin from South America to multiple cities in the eastern seaboard of the United States.

Mr. Collazo is a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and attended Temple University. He later received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminology from St. Leo University in the Tampa Bay Area.