Washington, DC - Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) William R. Brownfield will be in Budapest, Hungary on July 16 to celebrate 20 years of U.S.-run International Law Enforcement Academies (ILEAs), the first of which opened in Budapest in 1995.

A model of international knowledge-sharing and instruction, ILEA Budapest has served as the gold standard for such training programs, with ILEAs now operating in five countries across the globe. At these Academies, law enforcement officers from around the world receive instruction by top U.S. trainers from a wide range of federal and state agencies on best practices in fighting crime, democratic policing standards with an emphasis on respecting human rights, and tenets of modern leadership. Since ILEA Budapest began instructing European and Central Asian law enforcement 20 years ago, other ILEAs have opened in Thailand, Botswana, El Salvador, and in New Mexico. Law enforcement officers from 85 countries worldwide have taken part in an ILEA program.

Assistant Secretary Brownfield will be joined at the ILEA anniversary by FBI Executive Assistant Director Robert Anderson Jr. The FBI has played a crucial role in running ILEA Budapest since the Academy’s inception, and also supplies instructors to the other ILEAs. Reflective of a truly interagency effort, officers from the Departments of Homeland Security, Interior, Justice, State and Treasury have instructed their overseas counterparts at the ILEAs, helping to build foreign partner capacity in a variety of criminal justice fields such as counternarcotics operations and preventing hate crimes.