Brenton Easter is a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in New York. He began his law enforcement career in 2002 with the United States Border Patrol and moved over to DHS, HSI as a member of the El Dorado Task Force in 2004. Since 2019 he has worked out of the HSI Hudson Valley, Resident Agent in Charge office.
Easter’s jobs have ranged from pursuing human smugglers with the Border Patrol on the Southwest border to investigating the Italian mob in New York, to traveling to Colombia to chase narco-money launderers. Easter uses his wide array of experiences to bolster his investigative toolbox, which he utilizes to tackle all varieties of crime but most specifically cultural property, natural history and wildlife crimes tied to U.S. Customs violations.
Easter has worked on hundreds of cultural property investigations spanning all over the globe. His groundbreaking investigations have changed HSI’s tactics in combatting the illicit trafficking of cultural property. These investigations, have dismantled transnational criminal organizations and resulted in the recovery of record-breaking numbers of antiquities in both volume and value, totaling in the thousands and worth approximately a quarter of a billion dollars. One case in particular lead to the arrest and prosecution of a smuggler labeled one of the most prolific commodity smugglers in the world.
Easter earned degrees in anthropology and political science from Brandeis University.
