Andrew Bailey, left, co-deputy director of the FBI; Robert Eikhoff, special agent in charge of the FBI Jackson Field Office; and Clay Joyner, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi, speak in Oxford on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025.
Twenty people, including 14 law enforcement officers, across the Mississippi Delta and Tennessee were arrested on Thursday by the FBI in a drug conspiracy takedown after a sprawling years-long investigation, federal authorities announced.
The investigation and alleged police corruption spanned counties across the Delta and stretched into Memphis, Tennessee, where some of the officers are alleged to have accepted bribes in exchange for providing protection to undercover FBI agents posing as members of a Mexican drug cartel. On three occasions between 2023 and 2024, the officers escorted the undercover agents transporting cocaine through the rural Delta along U.S. Highway 61 and into Memphis, court records allege…