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 Agents- in-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. 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. Oversees programs designed to identify, with the financial community to identify disrupt, and dismantle organizations and eliminate potential vulnerabilities in the nation’s financial infrastructure. 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 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 trade- related 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. 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 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. 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. 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 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 Report directs ICE to submit a plan for the expanded use of 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 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 security- related 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.