Alonzo R. Peña is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Operations for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Prior to accepting this position, Mr. Peña served as the DHS attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, where he was the department's senior diplomat and liaison to the government of Mexico. As the direct representative for the Secretary of Homeland Security in Mexico, Mr. Peña was a leader in fostering increased counter-narcotics and law enforcement cooperation with Mexico and other regional partners. Mr. Peña served in this position from July 2008 - May 2009.
Previously, Mr. Peña served as Special Agent-in-Charge (SAC) of the ICE Office of Investigations in Phoenix, Ariz., where he was responsible for overseeing all ICE investigative activities in the nation's busiest human smuggling corridor. In addition, Mr. Peña oversaw investigations related to anti-terrorism, worksite enforcement, drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, financial crimes and child exploitation. He also played a key role in the creation and expansion of ICE's Border Enforcement Security Task Force (BEST) initiative, a series of multi-agency task forces developed as a comprehensive approach to combat cross-border crime.
Mr. Peña also served as the ICE SAC in San Antonio, Texas, and the Acting SAC in Houston.
A native of Falfurrias, Texas, he began his law enforcement career in 1982 as a Texas State Trooper. He joined federal service in 1984 as a Special Agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in Santa Ana, Calif. After several years with ATF, he joined the U.S. Customs Service as a special agent assigned to the Corpus Christi, Texas, office. In 1998, Peña was detailed to the former U.S. Customs Service headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he served as Assistant Director for the Smuggling Division.
Mr. Peña is a graduate of Pan American University in Edinburg, Texas, and he has completed additional training at the U.S. Customs Service Graduate School of Management at National-Louis University; the Advanced Executive Leadership Training Course from the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, Va.; and the Senior Executive Fellowship Program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.