DPS and Seven Sheriffs Took 1.2 Million Fentanyl Pills Off Arizona's Roads in Ten Months

On a Friday night this month in southern Arizona, a DPS squad went out looking for the people who move drugs. A man on a bicycle wouldn't stop and got chased down. A meth pipe turned up on another stop. A trooper checked someone's tattoos for gang ties. Some people went to jail. Some became informants.

That is what the job looks like up close. Here is what it looks like after ten months.

From December 2025 through September 2026, the Arizona Department of Public Safety says Operation Desert Guardian produced:

For scale: in September 2025, six months in, the operation had 622 arrests and about 971 pounds of drugs. The arrest count has more than quadrupled since.

"Operation Desert Guardian demonstrates what is possible when agencies work together," DPS Director Col. Jeffrey Glover said.

Desert Guardian isn't a new police force. Gov. Katie Hobbs created it by executive order in February 2025, and operations started that March. It is Arizona's first statewide unified command aimed at drug, human and weapons trafficking.

The point is simple and it took decades to get here: it doesn't replace local police. It connects them. Intelligence one agency has gets to the one that needs it.

The partners DPS lists:

It runs alongside Task Force SAFE, the Arizona National Guard deployment at the southern ports of entry.

Lt. Col. Daven Byrd, chief of the DPS Highway Patrol Division, describes the target as organized crime groups moving illegal guns and drugs into the state, and the goal as making Arizona a safe place to live.

The squad doing much of the street work is the DPS Strategic Priority Squad. Its people say the job isn't just seizing a load. It's tracing where the drugs came from, which is why some arrests turn into informants instead of just booking photos. One officer put the stakes in the plainest terms possible: a pill off the street is one a child can't mistake for candy.

In southern Arizona alone this year, troopers report about 1,200 arrests, more than 60 weapons and more than 400 pounds of drugs. The late-night sweeps happen about once a month. The squad says the rest of the work never stops. Byrd says he wants bigger numbers in year two.

Reports on the totals don't all match. Some coverage of the DPS video cites nearly 10,000 pounds of drugs and 15 agencies. DPS's own release says more than 8,900 pounds and lists 12 state and county agencies. We used the DPS release.

The totals also don't tell you how many arrests became charges and convictions, how many were trafficking cases versus possession, or how the work splits by county. Those are the numbers that show whether a statewide command works better than agencies working alone. We think it probably does. We want the data to prove it.

We want the county-by-county breakdown, how many Desert Guardian arrests led to charges, and how many cases involved human trafficking. We'll publish whatever DPS sends.

And to the troopers and deputies working those roads at 2 a.m., 400 miles from a crowd that will ever thank you: thank you. We are in service.

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How we reported this: drawn from the Arizona Department of Public Safety's Oct. 28 release and video on Operation Desert Guardian, the Governor's Office September 2025 release, and 13 News' October ride-along with the DPS Strategic Priority Squad. All totals are DPS figures and have not been independently verified; published reports differ on the drug weight and agency count, and we used DPS's release. Arrest totals do not show charges or convictions. We will ask DPS for county-level results and case outcomes and update this story with the answer. Corrections and information: [email protected].