Homeland Security: Challenges to Implementing the Immigration Interior Enforcement Strategy
Published: 2003-04-10T00:00:00

Fast Facts:

Highlights:
section_title: Why GAO Did This Study
paragraphs: Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Immigration Interior Enforcement Strategy's implementation is now the responsibility of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (BICE). This strategy was originally created by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). In the 1990s, INS developed a strategy to control illegal immigration across the U.S. border and a strategy to address enforcement priorities within the country's interior. In 1994, INS's Border Patrol issued a strategy to deter illegal entry. The strategy called for "prevention through deterrence"; that is, to raise the risk of being apprehended for illegal aliens to a point where they would consider it futile to try to enter. The plan called for targeting resources in a phased approach, starting first with the areas of greatest illegal activity. In 1999, the INS issued its interior enforcement strategy designed to deter illegal immigration, prevent immigration-related crimes, and remove those illegally in the United States. Historically, Congress and INS have devoted over five times more resources in terms of staff and budget on border enforcement than on interior enforcement.
section_title: What GAO Found
paragraphs: INS's interior enforcement strategy was designed to address (1) the detention and removal of criminal aliens, (2) the dismantling and diminishing of alien smuggling operations, (3) community complaints about illegal immigration, (4) immigration benefit and document fraud, and (5) employers' access to undocumented workers. These components remain in the BICE strategy. INS faced numerous challenges in implementing the strategy. For example, INS lacked reliable data to determine staff needs, reliable information technology, clear and consistent guidelines and procedures for working-level staff, effective collaboration and coordination within INS and with other agencies, and appropriate performance measures to help assess program results. As BICE assumes responsibility for strategy implementation, it should consider how to address these challenges by improving resource allocation, information technology, program guidance, and performance measurement. The creation of DHS has focused attention on other challenges to implementing the strategy. For example, BICE needs to coordinate and collaborate with the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) for the timely and proper adjudication of benefit applications, and with the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (BCBP) to assist in antismuggling investigations and sharing intelligence. In addition, BICE needs to assure that training and internal controls are sufficient to govern investigators' antiterrorism activities when dealing with citizens and aliens.

section_title: Letter
paragraphs: I am pleased to be here today to discuss the Department of Homeland  Security’s (DHS) Immigration Interior Enforcement Strategy, whose  implementation is now the responsibility of the Bureau of Immigration and  Customs Enforcement (BICE). As you know, this strategy was originally  created by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). This  statement discusses the interior enforcement strategy and selected issues  pertaining to its implementation and management.
In the 1990s, INS developed a strategy to control illegal immigration across  the U.S. border and a strategy to address enforcement priorities within the  country’s interior. In 1994, INS’s Border Patrol issued a strategy to deter  illegal entry. The strategy called for “prevention through deterrence”; that  is, to raise the risk of being apprehended for illegal aliens to a point where  they would consider it futile to try to enter. The plan called for targeting  resources in a phased approach, starting first with the areas of greatest  illegal activity. In 1999, the INS issued its interior enforcement strategy  designed to deter illegal immigration, prevent immigration-related crimes,  and remove those illegally in the United States. Historically, Congress and  INS have devoted over five times more resources in terms of staff and  budget on border enforcement than on interior enforcement.
In my statement today, I make the following points:  INS’s interior enforcement strategy was designed to address (1) the  detention and removal of criminal aliens, (2) the dismantling and  diminishing of alien smuggling operations, (3) community complaints  about illegal immigration, (4) immigration benefit and document fraud,  and (5) employers’ access to undocumented workers. These  components remain in the BICE strategy.
INS faced numerous challenges in implementing the strategy. For  example, INS lacked reliable data to determine staff needs, reliable  information technology, clear and consistent guidelines and procedures  for working-level staff, effective collaboration and coordination within  INS and with other agencies, and appropriate performance measures to  help assess program results. As BICE assumes responsibility for  strategy implementation, it should consider how to address these  challenges by improving resource allocation, information technology,  program guidance, and performance measurement.
The creation of DHS has focused attention on other challenges to  implementing the strategy. For example, BICE needs to coordinate and  collaborate with the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services  (BCIS) for the timely and proper adjudication of benefit applications,  and with the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (BCBP) to  assist in antismuggling investigations and sharing intelligence. In  addition, BICE needs to assure that training and internal controls are  sufficient to govern investigators’ antiterrorism activities when dealing  with citizens and aliens.
My testimony today is based primarily on the results of work that we have  completed in recent years, namely, our February 1999 testimony on INS’s  efforts to identify and remove criminal aliens, our April 1999 report on  INS’s worksite enforcement program, our May 2000 report on alien  smuggling, our May 2001 report on the processing of immigration  benefits, our January 2002 report on immigration benefit fraud, our  March 2002 report on INS’ Forensic Document Laboratory, our November  2002 report on INS’s alien address information, and our January 2003  reports on major management challenges and program risks at the  Departments of Homeland Security and Justice.
In these reports we made many recommendations to improve INS  operations. INS had implemented or was in the process of implementing  some of these recommendations. We plan to follow up on DHS plans to  improve the various programs.
subsections: section_title: Components of the Interior Enforcement Strategy
paragraphs: In January 1999, INS issued its Interior Enforcement Strategy. This  strategy focused resources on areas that would have the greatest impact  on reducing the size and annual growth of the illegal resident population.  Certain criteria were used to develop the priorities and activities of the  strategy. The criteria focused on potential risks to U.S. communities and  persons, costs, capacity to be effective, impact on communities, potential  impact on reducing the size of the problem, and potential value for  prevention and deterrence. The strategy established the following five  areas in priority order:  1.  Identify and remove criminal aliens and minimize recidivism. Under  this strategic priority, INS was to identify and remove criminal aliens  as they come out of the federal and state prison systems and those  convicted of aggravated felonies currently in probation and parole  status.  2.  Deter, dismantle, and diminish smuggling or trafficking of aliens. This  strategic priority called for INS to disrupt and dismantle the criminal  infrastructure that encourages and benefits from illegal migration. INS  efforts were to start in source and transit countries and continue inside  the United States, focusing on smugglers, counterfeit document  producers, transporters, and employers who exploit and benefit from  illegal migration.  3.  Respond to community reports and complaints about illegal  immigration. In addition to responding to local law enforcement issues  and needs, this strategic priority emphasizes working with local  communities to identify and address problems that arise from the  impact of illegal immigration, based on local threat assessments.  4.  Minimize immigration benefit fraud and other document abuse. Under  this strategic priority, INS was to aggressively investigate and  prosecute benefit fraud and document abuse to promote integrity of  the legal immigration system.  5.  Block and remove employers’ access to undocumented workers. The  strategy emphasizes denying employers access to unauthorized  workers by checking their compliance with the employment  verification requirements in the Immigration Reform and Control Act  of 1986. Coupled with its efforts to control smuggling activity, this  effort could have a multiplier effect on access of employers to illegal  workers and on the overall number of illegal residents in the country.
Figure 1 shows that INS had generally allocated its interior enforcement  resources consistent with these priorities and that the workyears devoted  to several of INS’s interior enforcement efforts had either declined or  stayed about the same between fiscal years 1998 and 2002.
section_title: Challenges to Implementing the Interior Enforcement Programs
paragraphs: Our work has shown that INS faced numerous daunting enforcement  issues, as will BICE as it assumes responsibility for the strategy. For  example, the potential pool of removable criminal aliens and fugitives  numbers in the hundreds of thousands. Many are incarcerated in hundreds  of federal, state, and local facilities, while others are fugitives at large  across the country. The number of individuals smuggled into the United  States has increased dramatically, and alien smuggling has become more  sophisticated, complex, organized, and flexible. Thousands of aliens  annually illegally seek immigration benefits, such as work authorization  and change of status, and some of these aliens use these benefits to enable  them to conduct criminal activities. Hundreds of thousands of aliens  unauthorized to work in the United States have used fraudulent  documents to circumvent the process designed to prevent employers from  hiring them. In many instances, employers are complicit in this activity.
Given the nature, scope, and magnitude of these activities, BICE needs to  ensure that it is making the best use of its limited enforcement resources.  We found that fundamental management challenges exist in several of the  interior enforcement programs and that addressing them will require the  high-level attention and concerted efforts of BICE.
subsections: section_title: Need for Better Staff Levels and Allocations
paragraphs: In several reports we noted that INS did not believe it had sufficient staff  to reach its program goals. Having data on how to effectively allocate staff  and placing sufficient staff in the right locations is important if BICE is to  achieve program goals. Staff shortages had contributed to INS’s inability to  promptly remove the majority of criminal aliens after they have completed  their prison sentences. In 1997 INS did not place into removal proceedings  50 percent of potentially deportable criminal aliens who were released  from federal prisons and state prisons from 5 states. In 1999 we reported  that, although the removal of criminal aliens was an INS management  priority, INS faced the same staff shortage issues in 1997 as it had in 1995.  In particular, agent attrition – about one-third of the workforce - continued  to impede INS’s ability to meet its program goals. INS had told us that  since 1997, the attrition rates of agents in this program has stabilized and  that, in fiscal year 2003, the agents from this program would be reclassified  as detention removal officers, which INS believed should further help  reduce attrition.
Even if INS had additional staff working in these program areas, it lacked  good management information to determine how many staff it needed to  meet its program goals and how best to allocate staff given the limited  resources it did have. With respect to its program for removing  incarcerated criminal aliens, INS told us that beginning in fiscal year 2002,  the agency implemented our recommendation to use a workload analysis  model. This was to help identify the resources the agency needed for its  criminal alien program in order to achieve overall program goals and  support its funding and staffing requests. We have not reviewed this new  model to ascertain its usefulness.
With respect to alien smuggling, INS lacked field intelligence staff to  collect and analyze information. Both 1998 and 1999 INS Annual  Performance Plan reports stated that the lack of intelligence personnel  hampered the collection, reporting, and analysis of intelligence  information. Although INS’s Intelligence Program proposed that each  district office have an intelligence unit, as of January 2000, 21 of INS’s 33  districts did not have anyone assigned full-time to intelligence-related  duties. Our ongoing work at land ports of entry shows this to be a  continuing problem.
The worksite enforcement program received a relatively small portion of  INS’s staffing and budget. In fiscal year 1998, INS completed a total of  6,500 worksite investigations, which equated to about 3 percent of the  estimated number of employers of unauthorized aliens. Given limited  enforcement resources, BICE needs to assure that it targets those  industries where employment of illegal aliens poses the greatest potential  risk to national security. The program now has several initiatives  underway that target sensitive industries.
section_title: Need for Better Information Technology
paragraphs: INS had long-standing difficulty developing and fielding information  systems to support its program operations, and effectively using  information technology continued to remain a challenge. For example, in  2002 we reported that benefit fraud investigations had been hampered by a  lack of integrated information systems. The operations units at the four  INS service centers that investigate benefit fraud operate different  information systems that did not interface with each other or with the  units that investigate benefit fraud at INS district offices. As a result,  sharing information about benefit applicants is difficult. The INS staff who  adjudicate applications did not have routine access to INS’s National  Automated Immigration Lookout System (NAILS). Not having access to or  not using NAILS essentially means that officers may be making decisions  without access to or using significant information and that benefits may be  granted to individuals not entitled to receive them. Thus, INS was not in  the best position to review numerous applications and detect patterns,  trends, and potential schemes for benefit fraud.
Further, in 2002 we reported that another INS database, the Forensic  Automated Case and Evidence Tracking System (FACETS), did not  contain sufficient data for managers to know the exact size and status of  the laboratory’s pending workload or how much time is spent on each  forensic case by priority category. As a result, managers were not in the  best position to make fact-based decisions about case priorities, staffing,  and budgetary resource needs.
With respect to the criminal alien program, in 1999 we reported that INS  lacked a nationwide data system containing the universe of foreign-born  inmates for tracking the hearing status of each inmate. In response to our  recommendation, INS developed a nationwide automated tracking system  for the Bureau of Prisons and deployed the system to all federal  institutional hearing program sites. INS said that it was working with the  Florida Department of Corrections to integrate that state’s system with  INS’s automated tracking system. INS also said that it planned to begin  working with New York, New Jersey, and Texas to integrate their systems  and then work with California, Illinois, and Massachusetts. We have not  examined these new systems to determine whether they were completed  as planned or to ascertain their effectiveness.
In 2000 we reported that INS lacked an agencywide automated case  tracking and management system that prevented antismuggling program  managers from being able to monitor their ongoing investigations,  determine if other antismuggling units were investigating the same target,  or know if previous investigations had been conducted on a particular  target. In response to our recommendation, INS deployed an automated  case tracking and management system for all of its criminal investigations,  including alien smuggling investigations. Again, we have not examined the  new system to ascertain its effectiveness.
section_title: Need for Better Guidance to Program Staff
paragraphs: Our review of the various program components of the interior  enforcement strategy found that working-level guidance was sometimes  lacking or nonexistent. INS had not established guidance for opening  benefit fraud investigations or for prioritizing investigative leads. Without  such criteria, INS could not be ensured that the highest-priority cases were  investigated and resources were used optimally.
INS’s interior enforcement strategy did not define the criteria for opening  investigations of employers suspected of criminal activities. In response to  our recommendation, INS clarified the types of employer-related criminal  activities that should be the focus of INS investigations.
INS’s alien smuggling intelligence program had been impeded by a lack of  understanding among field staff about how to report intelligence  information. Staff were unclear about guidelines, procedures, and effective  techniques for gathering, analyzing, and disseminating intelligence  information. They said that training in this area was critically needed.
section_title: Need for Better Performance Measures
paragraphs: INS had not established outcome-based performance measures that would  have helped it assess the results of its interior enforcement strategy. For  example, in 2000 we reported that while INS had met its numeric goals for  the number of smuggling cases presented for prosecution in its  antismuggling program, it had not yet developed outcome-based measures  that would indicate progress toward the strategy’s objective of identifying,  deterring, disrupting, and dismantling alien smuggling. This was also the  case for the INS intelligence program. INS had not developed outcome- based performance measures to gauge the success of the intelligence  program to optimize the collection, analysis, and dissemination of  intelligence information.
In 2002 we reported that INS had not yet established outcome-based  performance measures that would help it assess the results of its benefit  fraud investigations. Additionally, INS had not established goals or  measurement criteria for the service center operations units that conduct  fraud investigation activities. INS’s interior enforcement strategy did not  clearly describe the specific measures INS would use to gauge its  performance in worksite enforcement. For example, in 1999 we reported  that the strategy stated that INS would evaluate its performance on the  basis of such things as changes in the behavior or business practices of  persons and organizations, but did not explain how they expected the  behavior and practices to change. And although INS indicated that it  would gauge effectiveness in the worksite area by measuring change in the  wage scales of certain targeted industries, it left unclear a number of  questions related to how it would do this. For example, INS did not specify  how wage scales would be measured; what constituted a targeted industry;  and how it would relate any changes found to its enforcement efforts or  other immigration-related causes. The strategy stated that specific  performance measurements would be developed in the annual  performance plans required by the Government Performance and Results  Act.
According to INS’s fiscal year 2003 budget submission, the events of  September 11th required INS to reexamine strategies and approaches to  ensure that INS efforts fully addressed threats to the United States by  organizations engaging in national security crime. As a result, with regard  to investigating employers who may be hiring undocumented workers, INS  planned to target investigations of industries and businesses where there  is a threat of harm to the public interest. However, INS had not set any  performance measures for these types of worksite investigations.
section_title: Challenges Faced by DHS Relating to Interior Enforcement
paragraphs: Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and with the formation of DHS, a  number of management challenges are evident. Some of the challenges  discussed above carry over from the INS, such as the need for sound  intelligence information, efficient use of resources and management of  workloads, information systems that generate timely and reliable  information, clear and current guidance, and appropriate performance  measures. Other challenges are emerging. These include creating  appropriate cooperation and collaboration mechanisms to assure effective  program management, and reinforcing training and management controls  to help assure compliance with DHS policies and procedures and the  proper treatment of citizens and aliens.
subsections: section_title: Need for Program Collaboration/ Coordination
paragraphs: BICE will need to assure that appropriate cooperation and collaboration  occurs between it and other DHS bureaus. For example, both the Border  Patrol, now located in the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection  (BCBP), and BICE’s immigration investigations program conducted alien  smuggling investigations prior to the merger into DHS. These units  operated through different chains of command with different reporting  structures. As a result, INS’s antismuggling program lacked coordination,  resulting in multiple antismuggling units overlapping in their jurisdictions,  making inconsistent decisions about which cases to open, and functioning  autonomously and without a single chain of command. It’s unclear at this  time how the anti-smuggling program will operate under DHS. Should both  BCBP’s Border Patrol and BICE’s Investigations program continue to  conduct alien smuggling investigations, Under Secretary Hutchinson will  need to assure that coordination and collaboration exists to overcome  previous program deficiencies.
The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) is responsible  for administering services such as immigrant and nonimmigrant  sponsorship, work authorization, naturalization of qualified applicants for  U.S. citizenship, and asylum. Processing benefit applications is an  important DHS function that should be done in a timely and consistent  manner. Those who are eligible should receive benefits in a reasonable  period of time. However, some try to obtain these benefits through fraud,  and investigating fraud is the responsibility of BICE’s Immigration  Investigations program. INS’ approach to addressing benefit fraud was  fragmented and unfocused. INS’ interior enforcement strategy did not  address how the different INS components that conducted benefit fraud  investigations were to coordinate their investigations. Also, INS had not  established guidance to ensure the highest-priority cases are investigated.  Secretary Ridge will need to ensure the two bureaus work closely to  assure timely adjudication for eligible applicants while identifying and  investigating potential immigration benefit fraud cases.
BICE’s Intelligence Program is responsible for collecting, analyzing, and  disseminating immigration-related intelligence. Immigration-related  intelligence is needed by other DHS components such as Border Patrol  agents and inspectors within BCBP and personnel within BCIS  adjudicating immigration benefits. BICE will need to develop an  intelligence program structure to ensure intelligence information is  disseminated to the appropriate components within DHS’s other bureaus.
section_title: Need to Reinforce Training and Internal Controls
paragraphs: Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and with the formation of DHS,  the linkages between immigration enforcement and national security have  been brought to the fore. Immigration personnel have been tapped to  perform many duties that previously were not part of their normal routine.  For example, as part of a special registration program for visitors from  selected foreign countries, immigration investigators have been  fingerprinting, photographing, and interviewing aliens upon entry to the  U.S. Immigration investigators have also participated in anti-terrorism task  forces across the country and helped interview thousands of non- immigrant aliens to determine what knowledge they may have had about  terrorists and terrorist activities. As part of its investigation of the attacks  of September 11, the Justice Department detained aliens on immigration  charges while investigating their potential connection with terrorism. An  integrated Entry/Exit System, intended to enable the government to  determine which aliens have entered and left the country, and which have  overstayed their visas, is currently under development and will rely on  BICE investigators to locate those who violate the terms of their entry  visas.
All of these efforts attest to the pivotal role of immigration interior  enforcement in national security and expanded roles of investigators in  the fight against terrorism. It is important that BICE investigators receive  training to perform these expanded duties and help assure that they  effectively enforce immigration laws while recognizing the rights of  citizens and aliens. It is also important that DHS reinforce its management  controls to help assure compliance with DHS policies and procedures.