HIDTA · HIFCA Compliance Screening

Zip Code Designation Lookup

Checks whether a zip code falls in a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) county and/or a High Intensity Financial Crime Area (HIFCA) region, using officially sourced county designations and live geocoding.
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Sources & Methodology
This tool is a screening aid, not a legal or compliance determination. Verify any result that affects a regulatory, BSA/AML, or reporting decision against the primary sources below before relying on it.

How it works

For each zip code, the tool resolves the county via two public geocoding steps (zip → coordinates → county), then checks that county against embedded, sourced lists of HIDTA and HIFCA designated counties. Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands zip codes are matched directly, since those HIDTA/HIFCA designations cover entire territories.

HIDTA data — National HIDTA Assistance Center (NHAC)

  • Source: nhac.org official "HIDTA Counties by State" list, last updated by NHAC September 2025. 33 HIDTA regions, ~300 designated counties/equivalents across 50 states, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

HIFCA data — FinCEN (Treasury)

  • Source: FinCEN's official HIFCA Regional Map (fincen.gov/hifca). Seven designated regions: California Northern District, California Southern District, Southwest Border (Arizona + Texas border counties), Chicago, New York (NY + NJ), Puerto Rico/USVI, South Florida.
  • Texas border-region caveat: FinCEN defines the Texas portion of the Southwest Border HIFCA as counties "bordering, and adjacent to those bordering, the US and Mexico Boundary." This tool includes the 14 counties that directly touch the border (confirmed). FinCEN's published map is image-based and doesn't enumerate the second "adjacent" tier in machine-readable text — for a Texas county not on this confirmed list, check FinCEN's map directly before concluding it's excluded.

Geocoding services used

  • Zippopotam.us — zip code to coordinates/place name
  • FCC Area API (geo.fcc.gov) — coordinates to county (official FCC/Census geography lookup)

Known limitations

  • Zip codes occasionally straddle county lines; the tool returns the county at the zip's resolved centroid, which is standard practice but can misclassify a small share of edge-case addresses.
  • Designation lists change periodically (ONDCP adds/removes HIDTA counties by notice; FinCEN updates HIFCA regions). Re-verify against the source pages periodically.
  • Bulk search makes live network calls per zip code and is rate-limited to be a good API citizen — large batches (100+) will take a few minutes.