United States Government Accountability Office

GAO Testimony before the Chairman, 

Subcommittee on National Security, 

Emerging Threats, and International 

Relations, Committee on Government 

Reform, House of Representatives

HOMELAND SECURITY

Better Management 

Practices Could Enhance 

DHS’s Ability to Allocate 

Investigative Resources 

Statement of Richard Stana, Director 

Homeland Security and Justice 

For Release on Delivery

Expected at 2:00 p.m. EST 

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

 

GAO-06-462T 
What GAO Found

United States Government Accountability Office

Why GAO Did This Study

Highlights

Accountability Integrity Reliability

March 2006

HOMELAND SECURITY

Better Management Practices Could 

Enhance DHS’s Ability to Allocate 

Investigative Resources 

Highlights of GAO-06-462T, testimony 

before the Chairman, Subcommittee on 

National Security, Emerging Threats, and 

International Relations, Committee on 

Government Reform, House of 

Representatives 

Immigration and Customs

Enforcement’s (ICE) mission is to 

prevent terrorist attacks within the 

United States and reduce the 

vulnerability of the United States to 

terrorism while ensuring its 

mandated customs, immigration, 

and federal protective enforcement 

functions are not diminished. The 

ICE Office of Investigations (OI) 

supports that mission by

investigating customs and 

immigration violations. This

testimony addresses the following 

key questions that were answered

in GAO-06-48SU, a restricted report 

issued with the same title: (1) What

structure and activities has OI

adopted to address its mission? (2) 

In fiscal year 2004 and the first half

of fiscal year 2005, how did OI use 

its investigative resources to 

achieve its goals? (3) How does OI

ensure that its resource use 

contributes to its ability to prevent 

the exploitation of systemic

vulnerabilities in customs and 

immigration systems? 

OI’s organizational structure and investigative activities reflect those of its 

legacy agencies—the U.S. Customs Service and the Immigration and 

Naturalization Service—and include activities to prevent terrorism. OI 

retained responsibility for enforcing customs and immigration laws, and its 

field structure was created by relying on the strategic priorities of its legacy 

agencies to determine the composition and locations of field offices. Senior 

OI officials said that OI seeks to accomplish its homeland security mission 

by focusing on cases that seem to have a connection to national security. 

Data from ICE’s case management system indicate that its investigative 

activities generally relate to legacy missions, with about half of OI resources 

during fiscal year 2004 and the first half of 2005 used for cases related to 

drugs, financial crimes, and general alien investigations—investigations 

unlikely to contain a nexus to national security. Overall, between 10 and 15

percent of investigative resources were used for investigations considered to 

have a link to national security. OI’s current method of tracking these cases 

captures data about the cases where a nexus to national security is assumed 

due to the nature of the violation, primarily investigations of munitions 

control, illegal exports, visa violations, and terrorism. Additionally, the 

equivalent of about 400 of its 5,600 special agents worked full time to 

identify incarcerated aliens who were eligible for removal from the United 

States, a function that does not require the skills and training of criminal 

investigators. ICE plans to free investigators for more appropriate duties by 

shifting these functions to other ICE units and to study whether other 

functions could be shifted to employees in a noninvestigatory job series. 

To make resource use decisions in pursuit of OI’s goal to prevent the 

exploitation of systemic vulnerabilities in customs and immigration systems, 

OI primarily relies on the judgment of staff in its major field offices, in 

addition to national programs developed in headquarters that are 

implemented in multiple field offices. Although GAO found no evidence that 

OI has failed to investigate any national security-related lead that came to its 

attention, applying a risk management approach to determine what types of 

customs and immigration violations represent the greatest risks for 

exploitation by terrorists and other criminals could provide OI with greater 

assurance that it is focusing on preventing violations with the greatest 

potential for harm, while striking a balance among its various objectives. OI 

has taken some initial steps to introduce principles of risk management into 

its operations, but has not conducted a comprehensive risk assessment of 

the customs and immigration systems to determine the greatest risks for 

exploitation, nor has OI analyzed all relevant data to inform the evaluation of 

alternatives and allow risk-based resource allocation decisions. OI also lacks 

outcome-based performance goals that relate to its objective of preventing 

the exploitation of these systemic vulnerabilities. Finally, OI does not have 

sufficient systems to help ensure ongoing monitoring and communication of 

vulnerabilities discovered during its investigations. 

What GAO Recommends

GAO recommended that Homeland

Security implement management

practices to support resource 

allocation decisions, including a

risk assessment, revised 

performance measures, and 

monitoring and communication 

systems to provide meaningful data

about resource use. 

The Department of Homeland

Security concurred with GAO’s 

recommendations. 

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-462T.

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact Richard Stana 

at (202) 512-8816 or stanar@gao.gov. 
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

I am pleased to be here today to share our views on the progress the 

Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS), U.S. Immigration and Customs 

Enforcement (ICE) Office of Investigations (OI) has made in pursuing its 

homeland security mission. OI was formed in March 2003, mainly from 

legacy INS and Customs investigative components. OI is responsible for 

conducting investigations covering a broad array of national security, 

financial, and smuggling violations, including illegal arms exports, 

financial crimes, trade violations, human trafficking, narcotics smuggling, 

child pornography/exploitation, and immigration fraud. OI is also 

responsible for conducting investigations aimed at protecting critical 

infrastructure industries. This testimony is an unrestricted version of our 

recent Law Enforcement Sensitive report we did for this subcommittee 

entitled HOMELAND SECURITY: Better Management Practices Could 

Enhance DHS’s Ability to Allocate Investigative Resources.

1

 In my 

testimony today, I will discuss the following topics: 

• What structure and activities has OI adopted to address its mission? 

• How did OI use its investigative resources in fiscal year 2004 and the 

first half of fiscal year 2005? 

• How does OI ensure that its resource use contributes to its ability to 

prevent the exploitation of systemic vulnerabilities in customs and 

immigration systems? 

To identify OI’s structure and the activities it uses to address its mission 

we met with OI officials and reviewed documents used to support 

organizational decisions. To determine how OI used its investigative

resources to address its goals, we analyzed case management data that 

showed the types of investigations performed nationally between October

2003 and March 2005—the most recent period for which comparable data 

were available. In addition, we interviewed the management staff of OI 

and the special agents-in-charge (SAC) at 7 of the 26 ICE OI field offices to 

learn how they set investigative priorities and allocate human resources to 

investigations. We selected the special agent-in-charge offices based on 

their size (the number of agents) and location, seeking to include a variety 

 1

GAO, HOMELAND SECURITY: Better Management Practices Could Enhance DHS’s

Ability to Allocate Investigative Resources, GAO-06-48SU (Washington, D.C.: December 9,

2005). 

Page 1 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
of offices representing differing investigative focuses. Because our sample 

was a nonprobability sample, the opinions of these special agents-incharge cannot be projected beyond those interviewed.2

 We also collected

and analyzed data specific to the 7 offices we visited. We assessed the 

reliability of the investigative resource data—the hours spent on different 

types of investigations—by reviewing the internal controls of the case 

management system and through interviews with knowledgeable OI staff 

about these controls and the quality assurance procedures in place to

ensure data reliability. We determined the investigative resource data were

sufficiently reliable for our purposes. We determined how OI ensures that 

its resource use contributes to its ability to prevent the exploitation of 

systemic vulnerabilities in customs and immigration systems using 

information collected during interviews with OI officials, including the 

special-agents-in-charge and by examining documents used to support 

organizational decisions. We evaluated OI’s current approach to resource 

allocation decision making by comparing this information with the 

standards for internal control in the federal government and to the risk 

management approach that we have advocated in our prior work.3

OI’s organizational structure and investigative activities reflect those of its 

legacy agencies—the U.S. Customs Service and the Immigration and 

Naturalization Service. OI retained responsibility for enforcing customs 

and immigration laws and its field structure was created by relying on the 

strategic priorities of its legacy agencies—for example, proximity to highvolume smuggling corridors, to state and federal prisons, and significant 

money laundering infrastructure—to determine the composition and 

locations of field offices. Senior OI officials told us that rather than 

concentrating on any particular category of investigation, OI seeks to 

accomplish its homeland security mission by focusing on cases that seem 

Summary 

 2

Nonprobability sampling is a method of sampling where observations are selected in a 

manner that is not completely random, usually using specific characteristics of the 

population as criteria. Because each unit in a population does not have an equal chance to

be selected, it is possible for a nonprobability sample to contain a systematic bias that 

limits its ability to describe the entire population.

3

GAO, Homeland Security: Summary of Challenges Faced in Targeting Oceangoing 

Cargo Containers for Inspection, GAO-04-557T (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 31, 2004); 

Transportation Security: Systematic Planning Needed to Optimize Resources, 

GAO-05-357T (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 15, 2005); Strategic Budgeting: Risk Management 

Principles Can Help DHS Allocate Resources to Highest Priorities, GAO-05-824T 

(Washington, D.C.: June 29, 2005); Standards for Internal Control in the Federal 

Government, GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1 (Washington, D.C.: November 1999). 

Page 2 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
to have a connection to national security. This would include placing a 

priority on activities to prevent terrorism. 

Data from ICE’s case management system indicate between 10 and 

15 percent of investigative resources were used for investigations 

considered by ICE to have a link to national security. These investigations 

are primarily related to munitions control, illegal exports, compliance 

enforcement of visa violations, and terrorism. Most of OI’s investigative 

activities generally relate to legacy missions, with roughly half of OI 

resources during fiscal year 2004 and the first half of 2005 used for cases 

related to drugs, financial crimes, and general alien investigations. Most of

these investigations did not contain a nexus to national security. 

Moreover, with regard to the resources used for general alien 

investigations, the equivalent of about 400 of OI’s 5,600 special agents 

were working full time to identify incarcerated aliens who were eligible for

removal from the United States, an ICE responsibility. This activity does

not require the skills and training of criminal investigators. ICE plans to 

free investigators for more appropriate duties by shifting these functions 

to other ICE units, and to submit a plan for the expanded use of a 

noninvestigatory job series for civil and administrative violations. 

OI tries to ensure that its resources contribute to the prevention of 

exploitation of systemic vulnerabilities in customs and immigration 

systems by making most investigative resource use decisions in OI’s major 

field offices, based on the judgment of the agents in charge, with priority

on investigating national security-related cases that arise. Divisions and 

units within OI headquarters also develop and manage special programs 

that are implemented in multiple field offices. For example, Project Shield

America is a National Security Division program where OI conducts 

outreach to private sector companies to prevent the illegal export of 

sensitive U.S. munitions and strategic technology. The Cornerstone 

program in the Financial and Trade Division is a similar outreach program 

to the financial industry. Operation Community Shield is a national law 

enforcement initiative that is designed to bring all of ICE’s immigration 

and customs-related law enforcement powers to bear in the fight against 

violent street gangs. Although we found no evidence that OI has failed to

investigate any national security-related lead that came to its attention, 

applying a risk management approach to determine what types of customs 

and immigration violations represent the greatest risks for exploitation by

terrorists and other criminals could provide OI with greater assurance that

it is focusing on preventing violations with the greatest potential for harm, 

while striking a balance among its various objectives. OI has taken some 

initial steps to introduce principles of risk management into its operations, 

Page 3 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
but has not conducted a comprehensive risk assessment of the customs 

and immigration systems to determine the greatest risks for exploitation, 

nor analyzed all relevant data to inform the evaluation of alternatives and 

allow OI to make risk-based resource allocation decisions. OI also lacks 

outcome-based performance goals that relate to its objective of preventing

the exploitation of these systemic vulnerabilities. Finally, OI does not have 

sufficient systems to help ensure ongoing monitoring and communication 

of vulnerabilities discovered during its investigations. We made 

recommendations to address these deficiencies.

ICE is the largest investigative arm of DHS. ICE is composed of four 

offices: (1) Investigations, (2) Intelligence, (3) Detention and Removal 

Operations (DRO), and (4) the Federal Protective Service. As of 

September 2005, OI had more than 5,600 special agents; about 94 percent 

of these are assigned to 26 major field offices, headed by Special Agentsin-Charge (SAC), and OI’s foreign attaché offices. These offices and their 

subordinate units were created using the immigration and customs staff 

and locations in existence at the time ICE was formed. 

Background 

At headquarters ICE, OI is divided into five divisions as shown in figure 1.

Three of the five divisions—National Security, Finance and Trade, and 

Smuggling and Public Safety—were created to incorporate the core 

missions and functions of legacy immigration and customs investigations.

These divisions and the units within them are to provide a functional line 

of communication from the Director of OI to the groups in the SAC offices 

that conduct investigations. Divisions and units within OI headquarters 

also develop and manage special programs that are implemented in 

multiple field offices. For example, Project Shield America is a National 

Security Division program where OI conducts outreach to private sector 

companies to prevent the illegal export of sensitive U.S. munitions and 

strategic technology. The Cornerstone program in the Financial and Trade 

Division is a similar outreach program to the financial industry. Operation

Community Shield is a national law enforcement initiative that is designed

to bring all of ICE’s immigration and customs-related law enforcement 

powers to bear in the fight against violent street gangs. 

The Investigative Services Division provides direct forensic, undercover,

and other operational support to OI investigations carried out by the three 

core divisions, and the Mission Support Division provides policy guidance 

and services to facilitate executive oversight. 

Page 4 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
Figure 1. ICE Office of Investigations Organizational Structure 

ICE Office of Investigations

National Security Division

Oversees investigative programs 

designed to protect our national 

security by combating terrorism and 

preventing the illegal importation, 

exportation, and transfer of weapons of 

mass destruction, arms and munitions 

and critical technology. Case 

categories include: 

● munitions control

● illegal exports

● counterterrorism

● compliance with visa 

● requirements

Investigative Services Division

Assists and supports investigative 

programs and special agents, by, for 

example, providing forensic analysis, 

conducting undercover operations, and 

investigating cyber crimes.

Mission Support Division

Provides policy guidance and services 

to facilitate executive oversight in areas 

such as financial and logistics 

management, information 

management, and workforce planning.

Finance and Trade Division

Oversees efforts to investigate 

financial crimes and to work closely 

with the financial community to identify 

and eliminate potential vulnerabilities 

in the nation’s financial infrastructure. 

Protects America’s financial service 

systems from illegal money laundering, 

insurance schemes, bulk cash 

smuggling, intellectual property rights 

and counterfeit goods trafficking and 

other financial crimes. Case 

categories include:

● financial crimes

● commercial fraud

Smuggling and Public

Safety Division

Oversees programs designed to identify, 

disrupt, and dismantle organizations 

that smuggle contraband and humans 

into the United States; pose a threat to 

the health, safety, and rights of the 

public; threaten U.S. critical 

infrastructure; or defraud the United 

States. Case categories include:

● general smuggling

● human smuggling/trafficking

● general alien investigation

● drug investigations

● document fraud

● immigration benefit fraud

Source: GAO analysis of OI documents.

Carryover Organizational 

Structure and Investigative 

Activities from Legacy 

Agencies Affect OI’s

Investigative Focus 

The headquarters and field organizational structures adopted by OI reflect 

the legacy functions of the customs and immigration services—e.g. drug 

investigations, human smuggling, and commercial fraud—and include 

activities to prevent terrorism within this structure. In April 2005, ICE 

completed an interim strategic plan that established as its mission to 

prevent terrorist attacks within the United States and reduce the 

vulnerability of the United States to terrorism while ensuring all of its 

mandated trade, immigration, and federal protective functions are not 

Page 5 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
diminished. According to ICE officials, the national security objectives are 

not accomplished through any particular type or category of investigation.

Instead, these objectives are addressed by examining investigations on a 

case-by-case basis and determining the relationship of any single case to 

national security. For example, although OI has the authority to investigate 

any employer that might have violated laws that regulate alien

employment eligibility, OI instructs investigators to focus on employers at 

critical infrastructure sites. 

When ICE was created, it retained responsibility for enforcing the customs 

and immigration laws that were the purview of its legacy agencies. These

include criminal statutes addressing the illegal import and export of drugs, 

weapons, child pornography, stolen antiquities, and other contraband, as 

well as alien smuggling, human trafficking, and the international 

laundering and smuggling of criminal proceeds. OI also is responsible for 

legacy customs enforcement of certain intellectual property and traderelated commercial fraud statutes and legacy immigration enforcement of 

laws prohibiting document fraud, benefit fraud, illegal entry into the 

United States or violations of the terms and conditions of entry, and 

employment without authorization.4

 OI’s field structure was created by 

merging the existing Customs and INS field offices located primarily in 

cities near major ports of entry. In addition, ICE relied on the strategic 

priorities of the legacy agencies to determine the composition and 

locations of SAC offices—for example, high-volume smuggling corridors, 

proximity to state and federal prisons, and significant money laundering 

infrastructure. 

There are some long-standing functions of the legacy agencies that OI 

continues to perform, which also drive some of the types of investigative 

activities that are conducted. For example, OI has continued the legacy 

Customs practice of responding to violations concerning seized drugs or 

merchandise or detained persons uncovered at ports of entry by Customs 

and Border Protection (CBP) inspectors. U.S. Customs had historically 

been involved with helping to implement the President’s National Drug 

 4

OI also has investigatory responsibilities for certain international terrorism offenses, such 

as providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations. Although anti-terrorism 

laws passed before and after the creation of DHS, such as the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, 

Pub. L. No. 107-56, 115 Stat. 273, and the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act

of 2004, Pub. L. No. 108-458, 118 Stat. 3638, did not give ICE additional authority, they did 

expand many of the criminal statutes ICE enforces, especially those concerning certain 

terrorism and money-laundering offenses. 

Page 6 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
Control Strategy. Consistent with this involvement, DHS now receives 

funding specifically to support activities related to the strategy. A senior 

OI official said OI will continue to be responsible for performing a 

significant level of drug investigations because there simply is no other 

agency available to conduct the large number of border-related drug 

investigations U.S. Customs has historically performed and that are now 

carried out by OI. Another carryover function that OI now performs is the 

legacy INS practice of identifying aliens incarcerated in prisons and jails 

that are eligible for removal from the United States. 

Between 10 and 15 percent of investigative hours were classified by OI as 

having a direct nexus to national security. Although there is no firm 

standard for how OI should distribute its investigative resources, ICE’s 

interim strategic goals and objectives place a strong emphasis on national 

security-related activities. According to OI, the majority of the national

security-related investigative hours were charged in a few case categories 

related to munitions control, illegal exports, compliance enforcement of 

visa violations, and terrorism. Most of the investigative hours within those 

case types that consumed roughly half of OI resources—drugs, financial,

and general alien—were rarely classified as having a direct nexus to 

national security.5

 In its fiscal year 2007 budget justification, DHS 

requested funds to increase the level of resources dedicated to visa 

compliance enforcement by more than 40 percent through the addition of 

over 50 special agent and support staff dedicated to these types of 

investigations. 

OI Investigative 

Resources Were Used 

for Investigations 

Related to Its Legacy 

Missions, but Most 

Were Not Considered 

to Have a National 

Security Nexus

Roughly half of OI investigative resources during fiscal year 2004 and the 

first half of fiscal year 2005 were used for cases related to drugs, financial 

crimes, and general alien violations. The resource use in the other case 

categories pertains to investigations of a variety of customs and 

immigration violations including commercial fraud, general smuggling, 

human smuggling and trafficking, identity fraud, document fraud, and 

 5

Although they do not fall into the categories that OI identified as having a national security

link, OI officials told us that there may be other investigative categories that could be

considered national security related. National Security Presidential Directive 25 designated 

international drug trafficking organizations and their linkages to international terrorist 

organizations as a threat to national security. If the OI resources dedicated to the

investigation of drug trafficking that involves major criminal organizations are included in 

the national security-related measure, then the percentage of investigative resources 

devoted to national security might be as high as 18 percent in fiscal year 2004 and 

19 percent in fiscal year 2005. 

Page 7 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
worksite enforcement. None of the investigative categories that apply to

these violations individually accounted for more than 8 percent of 

investigative resource use during the period under study. In most 

instances these other case categories accounted for 5 percent or less of 

resource use. 

Moreover, with regard to general alien investigations, the equivalent of 

about 400 OI investigators performed, as a central part of their daily 

duties, functions that are noninvestigative in nature (i.e., not consistent 

with the position description of a criminal investigator as defined by the 

Office of Personnel Management.) According to OI officials, some of these 

noninvestigative activities were formerly performed by legacy INS 

investigators and include identifying incarcerated criminal aliens who are 

eligible for removal, an ICE responsibility, and responding to state and 

local police agencies that have apprehended illegal aliens. According to 

ICE’s interim strategic plan, ICE plans to shift this duty to ICE’s Office of 

Detention and Removal Operations (DRO). A DRO official told us DRO 

planned to take over this role from OI incrementally by first assuming 

responsibility for this activity in several major metropolitan areas in 

2005 and 2006. 

OI investigators also perform worksite enforcement, which according to 

the OI Deputy Assistant Director responsible for this function, includes 

activities that might be more economically performed by noninvestigatory 

staff. This function—verifying that employees at critical and noncritical 

worksites are eligible to work in the United States—was described by OI 

officials as a compliance function that is not clearly aligned with the 

criminal investigator job description. Since the late 1990s, the level of

investigative resources legacy INS and then ICE dedicated to this function 

has decreased. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, INS and

ICE have concentrated worksite investigative resources at critical 

infrastructure facilities. In its fiscal year 2007 budget justification, DHS 

requested funds to support the addition of 206 positions—171 of which are 

special agents—to conduct worksite enforcement. If these resources are 

approved and used for worksite enforcement, this would increase OI’s 

worksite enforcement effort significantly compared to what was done in 

fiscal year 2005. 

The fiscal year 2006 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations 

Conference Report6

 directs ICE to submit a plan for the expanded use of 

 6

H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 109-241, at 47 (2005). 

Page 8 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
immigration enforcement agents to focus on civil and administrative 

violations, raising the possibility that additional noninvestigative duties 

may be shifted from OI investigators, making them available for criminal 

investigations. 

OI Places Priority on 

National Security 

Investigations, but Key 

Management Practices 

Could Enhance OI’s

Resource Allocation 

Decision-Making 

OI tries to ensure that its resources contribute to the prevention of the 

exploitation of systemic vulnerabilities in customs and immigration 

systems by making most investigative resource use decisions in OI’s major 

field offices, based on the judgment of the agents in charge, with priority

on investigating national security-related cases that arise. Although we 

found no evidence that OI has failed to investigate any national securityrelated lead that came to its attention, applying a risk management 

approach to proactively determine what types of customs and immigration 

violations represent the greatest risks for exploitation by terrorists and 

other criminals could provide OI with greater assurance that it is focusing 

most intensely on preventing those violations with the greatest potential 

for harm while striking an appropriate balance among its various 

objectives. According to the Standards for Internal Control in the Federal 

Government, one of the foundational components of a good control 

environment is risk assessment—including the assessment of risks, 

estimation of their significance, the likelihoods of their occurrence, and 

decisions about how to respond to them. 

OI has taken some initial steps to introduce principles of risk management 

into its operations—for example, encouraging its field managers to think

about violations in terms of vulnerabilities to the customs and immigration 

systems. In addition, OI classifies each investigation using the numeric 

designations 1, 2, and 3, with class 1 indicating the highest relative 

importance within that category of investigation. However, it has not 

conducted a comprehensive risk assessment of the customs and 

immigration systems to determine the greatest risks for exploitation or 

analyzed these data to provide information to evaluate alternative 

investigative strategies and allow OI to make risk-based resource 

allocation decisions. Such a system could provide OI with greater 

assurance that it is striking an appropriate balance among its various 

objectives while focusing most intensely on preventing those violations 

with the greatest potential for harm. 

Application of a risk management approach by OI involves a risk 

assessment that would provide information in three areas: (1) threat—

what strategic intelligence and experience suggest about how customs and 

immigration systems might be exploited by terrorists and other criminals; 

Page 9 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
(2) vulnerabilities—the ways that customs and immigration systems are 

open to exploitations and the kinds of protections that are built into these 

systems; and (3) consequence—the potential results of exploitation of 

these systems, including the most dire prospects. For example, ICE’s 

strategic goal to prevent the unlawful movement across U.S. borders of 

people, money, and materials, includes as one of its strategies giving 

highest priority to closing those vulnerabilities that pose the greatest 

threat to our national security. However, OI has not performed a risk 

assessment to determine which vulnerabilities pose the greatest threat so 

that it can direct resources to those investigations that best address these 

vulnerabilities. Figure 2 demonstrates how the risk assessment and 

investigator’s judgment would combine to inform case selection and 

resource allocation. 

Page 10 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
Figure 2. Potential Decision-Making Approach for Evaluation and Selection of Investigative Resource Allocation Alternatives

Risk Assessment

ICE headquarters coordinates

information and disseminates guidance to SACs

Probability of 

exploitation

Consequence

of exploitation

Threat Vulnerability Consequence

Investigator Judgment

SACs and their staffs apply expertise and specialized 

local knowledge

Balanced portfolio of 

investigative activities

that helps ensure 

investment of resources

with maximum contribution 

to ICE’s mission

SACs evaluate alternatives based on the relative 

contribution of cases to ICE’s mission

Source: GAO analysis of the application of risk management principles in the ICE investigative context.

ICE has begun to incorporate elements of risk management into its 

resource allocation decision making. OI has several ongoing programs 

within its National Security Division designed to identify and mitigate 

national security threats. One is Project Shield America, where special 

agents conduct outreach to the export industry to educate these 

businesses about U.S. export laws and to solicit their assistance in 

preventing the illegal foreign acquisition of their products. OI also uses the 

Threat Analysis Unit and Compliance Enforcement Unit within the 

National Security Division to screen nonimmigrant students, exchange 

students, and other visitors for the purpose of identifying potential 

Page 11 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
national security threats. The value of risk management goes beyond these 

types of resource allocation, however. Specifically, a more comprehensive 

risk management approach would enable OI to better ensure that its 

resources are effectively and efficiently applied to its national security and

other missions by giving it a foundation for determining how resources 

might be best distributed within and across investigation types, for 

example, (1) how to best allocate its resources among case categories 

(e.g., visa violations, drug smuggling, and financial crimes); (2) the 

appropriate level of investment in national-security related investigations;

and (3) the appropriate mix of case classifications within each category 

(i.e., the three-level classification of cases based on relative importance). 

Effective risk management also requires outcome-based performance 

measures and goals. We found OI lacks outcome-based performance goals

to monitor the full range of its efforts to prevent the systemic 

vulnerabilities that allow terrorists and other criminals to endanger the 

United States. Performance goals—consisting of a target (acceptable level 

of performance) and a measure (a means to assess the performance 

level)—are an essential management tool in managing programs for 

results. In addition, our Standards for Internal Control in the Federal 

Government and the Office of Management and Budget call for agencies to 

have performance measures and indicators that are linked to mission, 

goals, and objectives to allow for comparisons to be made among different 

sets of data (for example, desired performance against actual

performance) so that corrective actions can be taken if necessary. 

Currently, OI relies primarily upon statistics related to investigative 

resource use—such as arrests, seizures, and convictions—to monitor 

performance. In fact, ICE reports only one output performance measure 

for OI on the DHS Performance and Accountability Report—the 

percentage of investigations that result in an enforcement action (e.g., an

arrest, conviction, or fine). Measuring the percentage of investigations that

result in enforcement action provides only an indirect indicator of success 

in preventing systemic vulnerabilities that allow terrorists and other 

criminals to endanger the United States. Among other things, it lacks the 

ability to reflect successes of OI’s programmatic activities that are 

designed to deter the exploitation of systemic vulnerabilities before a 

crime is committed—for example, a measure of the outcomes of actions 

taken to close or control identified vulnerabilities. Without outcome-based 

performance goals, it is difficult for OI to gauge the effectiveness of its 

operational activities and to use this information to assess what types of 

corrective actions might be required—such as changes to programs or 

work processes in order to better align activities with strategic objectives.

Page 12 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
Finally, OI does not have sufficient systems to help ensure ongoing 

monitoring and communication of vulnerabilities discovered during its 

investigations. These controls could enhance OI’s ability to take action to

eliminate those vulnerabilities or to recommend mitigation practices to 

entities that control the applicable customs or immigration system. 

Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government calls for 

agencies to establish monitoring and communication systems that assess 

the quality of performance over time and ensure that findings of 

deficiencies are corrected and result in improvements to the process. OI 

officials said they are trying to use Cornerstone—a program to identify 

and reduce systemic vulnerabilities in financial systems—as a model for 

creating such a feedback loop (see fig. 3). Cornerstone was created by ICE 

to encourage coordination with the financial industry. OI officials in 

headquarters and field offices conduct outreach to the private sector and 

partner with private industry as well as with state and other federal law 

enforcement and regulatory agencies. The private sector provides ICE 

with information regarding the vulnerabilities it has observed, and ICE 

uses this information to develop criminal investigations. ICE also 

disseminates information on vulnerabilities to financial sector 

stakeholders through the Cornerstone Report. When vulnerabilities are 

identified that cannot be addressed by the private sector alone, ICE 

officials told us that a joint law enforcement and regulatory approach is 

utilized to eliminate or minimize vulnerabilities. 

Page 13 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
Figure 3. The Cornerstone Process 

Use investigations to 

identify vulnerabilities

Conduct outreach to the 

private sector partners to 

communicate known 

vulnerabilities

Partners provide feedback on 

other vulnerabilities and 

investigative leads

Work with partners to 

reduce vulnerabilities

Monitor legal and 

regulatory 

changes, and 

modifications to 

private sector 

policies to reduce 

or eliminate the 

identified 

vulnerability

Source: ICE Office of Investigations officials and documents.

With the exception of the Cornerstone program for financial 

investigations, OI does not have a complete system in place to help ensure 

that information gained during the course of investigations feeds back into 

the operations of other DHS components, other federal agencies, state and 

local partners, and relevant private sector entities to proactively reduce 

the vulnerabilities that facilitate violations. OI has taken initial steps to 

apply parts of the Cornerstone approach to all its investigative areas. For 

example, Project Shield America uses the same outreach techniques to the 

export sector as Cornerstone does to the financial sector, without the 

emphasis on changing policies and practices to reduce identified 

vulnerabilities. However, OI officials told us that OI does not have a 

process to help ensure that action is taken to mitigate the risks from the 

vulnerability identified during the course of its investigations across all 

SACs. A systemwide process for capturing the information and ensuring 

that OI takes appropriate actions in response to information, extending 

beyond financial crimes, would better support its ability to reduce 

vulnerabilities in immigration and customs systems by allowing OI to 

monitor the progress of efforts to reduce vulnerabilities and the 

identification of those involved in these efforts. Such a process is 

especially important for OI, since so many of its operations are 

collaborative, and the vulnerabilities identified through its investigations 

Page 14 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
may require legal or policy changes that are controlled by external 

stakeholders. 

Although OI, as the primary investigative agency of the Department of 

Homeland Security states that it places priority on national security, from 

a practical standpoint, it is focused on enforcing all laws and regulations 

governing the customs and immigration systems. Before the creation of 

the DHS, these efforts, carried out by legacy INS and U.S. Customs service 

had a limited relation to national security—and indeed even since 

becoming a part of DHS, cases considered to be directly related to national 

security have demanded a relatively small portion of OI’s resources. 

Particularly considering its wide-ranging mission, a more comprehensive 

risk management approach could provide OI with better information to 

evaluate its alternatives and balance its resource allocations most 

effectively across the broad array of violations it is responsible for 

investigating. Although OI has applied some of the principles of risk 

management to its operations, applying a comprehensive risk management 

approach would provide a stronger evidence-based foundation to help it 

ensure that its resource allocation best supports its ability to prevent those 

systematic vulnerabilities with the most potential to endanger the United 

States. Specifically, a more comprehensive risk management approach 

would enable OI to better ensure that its resources are effectively and 

efficiently applied to its national security and other missions by giving it a 

foundation for determining how resources might be best distributed within 

and across investigation types, for example, (1) how to best allocate its 

resources among case categories (e.g., visa violations, drug smuggling, and 

financial crimes), (2) the appropriate level of investment in nationalsecurity related investigations, and (3) the appropriate mix of case 

classifications within each category (i.e., the three-level classification of 

cases based on relative importance). 

Conclusions 

Lacking OI-wide outcome-based performance goals to assess its ability to 

prevent the exploitation of systematic vulnerabilities in customs and 

immigration systems that allow terrorists and other criminals to endanger 

the United States makes it difficult for OI to evaluate the results of its 

efforts in light of that objective. In addition, this lack may promote a 

tendency for OI to stay in the functional mindset of its legacy agencies. In

particular, using data like the number of arrests, fines, drug and other 

seizures, prosecutions, and convictions gives OI some ability to assess the 

outputs of its activities. However, relying primarily on this type of 

performance data may make it more difficult for OI to determine if it 

should alter its investigative focus because favorable outputs (e.g., high 

Page 15 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
numbers of arrests) tend to reinforce the current focus whether or not it is

helping accomplish the ICE mission. Without outcome-based performance 

goals that are tied to ICE’s mission and objectives, the agency will lack a 

sufficient basis for assessing the alignment of resources that might offer 

the greatest contribution to this broad mission. Developing measures that 

can meaningfully gauge performance related to an expansive deterrence 

mission like ICE’s is not an easy task. However, armed with information 

about the relative risk to the customs and immigration systems, OI could 

be in a better position to measure its performance and make resource use 

decisions based on the potential to mitigate the most crucial identified 

risks. 

Finally, a critical part of the ICE mission is to reduce the vulnerability of 

the United States to terrorism. OI’s Cornerstone program and efforts to 

extend this approach to other investigative areas are intended to reduce 

vulnerabilities by feeding lessons learned from criminal investigations 

back into the organization’s systems and practices. However, these efforts 

do not include sufficient monitoring and communication systems to 

ensure that information is systematically fed back and that it consistently 

results in corrective actions. A feedback process that includes processes 

and procedures (for example, clearly established lines of reporting and 

authority and documented protocols) to help ensure that vulnerabilities OI 

uncovers during its investigations will result in mitigation measures or in 

recommendations for such measures to entities responsible for the 

applicable system would enhance OI’s ability to reduce vulnerabilities in 

customs and immigration systems. 

To put OI in a better position to allocate its investigative resources in a 

manner that maximizes their contribution to the achievement of ICE’s 

mission, we recommended that the Secretary of Homeland Security direct

the Assistant Secretary of ICE to take the following three actions: 

Recommendations 

• Conduct comprehensive threat, vulnerability, and consequence risk 

assessments of the customs and immigration systems to identify the 

types of violations with the highest probability of occurrence and most 

significant consequences in order to guide resource allocation for OI 

national programmatic activity and to expand the available information 

upon which SACs base their decisions to open new cases. 

• On the basis of the results of the risk assessment, develop outcomebased performance goals (measures and targets) that reflect the 

Page 16 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
contribution of various investigative activities to ICE’s mission and 

objectives and develop a reliable method for tracking national securityrelated activity and classification criteria for the case management 

system that express the contributions of each investigation. 

• Develop an OI-wide system to monitor and communicate the more 

significant vulnerabilities in customs and immigration systems that are 

identified during the course of OI investigations. This process should 

include a method to mitigate the vulnerability internally or to ensure 

that the vulnerability and associated mitigation recommendations are 

communicated to external stakeholders with responsibility for the 

applicable system. 

In response to our first recommendation, DHS agreed risk management is 

a valuable tool to establish priorities in a multiple threat environment and 

said ICE intends to take a broader, component-wide approach to assessing 

risk. DHS agreed that the ICE Office of Investigations resource decisions 

should be based on priorities derived from a strategic-planning process in 

which directors and unit managers from all ICE OI program areas 

participate, including mission support. DHS said priorities set forth in the 

strategic plan should be reviewed annually, revised as necessary, and 

communicated to each SAC. 

While DHS agreed with our second recommendation, it said that ICE 

needs to maintain the flexibility to develop performance goals that reflect 

its mission and may not necessarily be measurable in an outcome-based 

manner. DHS said the Office of Management and Budget has 

acknowledged that for certain activities (e.g., law enforcement) “outcomeoriented” performance measures may be difficult to identify and 

performance may be tracked by using a variety of output as well as 

qualitative measures. DHS said each division within OI uses standard law 

enforcement statistics covering all of its program units that can be shared, 

understood, and compared over the years, including arrests, indictments 

and convictions, broken out by category. We agree that developing 

outcome-based performance measures for law enforcement activities can

be difficult and that some output measures can be beneficial. However, we 

continue to believe that where possible OI should seek to develop 

outcome-based performance measures that would better demonstrate the 

value of its efforts. OI needs to allocate resources to the types of 

investigations that have the best chance of mitigating potential 

vulnerabilities in customs and immigration systems to terrorism. 

Page 17 GAO-06-462T Investigative Priorities 
With regard to our third recommendation, DHS said that OI headquarters’

program managers regularly communicate with the SAC offices to obtain 

feedback on significant cases and identified vulnerabilities. This 

information is documented in reports that are transmitted two times a day 

to both the OI and DHS leadership. A weekly report also is prepared that 

summarizes the significant cases of the week. DHS said that OI has 

established designated liaisons to both U.S. Citizenship and Immigration 

Services and CBP and they communicate specific vulnerabilities and 

threats. While these efforts are useful, our recommendation envisions a 

more comprehensive strategy to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in 

customs and immigration systems and processes. We are encouraged that 

OI intends to continue to expand such outreach and partnership efforts. In 

implementing our recommendation, we believe that OI should obtain and

use feedback from all relevant governmental and nongovernmental 

organizations in its efforts to mitigate potential vulnerabilities. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement. I would be pleased to 

respond to any questions that you or other members of the Subcommittee 

may have at this time. 

For further information about this testimony, please contact Richard Stana 

at 202-512-8777. 

Other Key contributors to this statement were Michael Dino and Tony 

DeFrank. 

GAO Contacts and 

Staff 

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