The primary mission of DHS is, among other things, to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The creation of DHS brought together 22 agencies with responsibility for securing the borders and coastal waters, transportation sector, ports, and critical infrastructure (such as telecommunications systems), among other things. In addition, DHS consolidated some nonsecurity agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s natural disaster response functions and maritime safety and drug interdiction by the Coast Guard. The creation of DHS was also intended to coordinate the sharing of homeland security information and foster closer coordination with federal agencies that were not incorporated into DHS, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of State. Under INS, and now within DHS, immigration enforcement and service are complex, multifaceted functions. Immigration enforcement includes, among other things, patrolling 8,000 miles of international boundaries to prevent illegal entry into the United States; inspecting over 500 million travelers each year to determine their admissibility; apprehending, detaining, and removing criminal and illegal aliens; disrupting and dismantling organized smuggling of humans and contraband as well as human trafficking; investigating and prosecuting those who engage in benefit and document fraud; and enforcing compliance with programs such as the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) and the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indication Technology (US- VISIT). Immigration service includes providing services or benefits to facilitate entry, residence, employment, and naturalization of legal immigrants; processing millions of applications each year; making the right adjudicative decision in approving or denying the applications; and rendering decisions in a timely manner. Some background about the long-standing management problems at INS is useful to set the stage for the transformation task DHS inherited. In this respect, over the years, we have written numerous reports that identified management challenges INS experienced in its efforts to achieve both effective immigration law enforcement and service delivery. In assuming the responsibility for immigration enforcement and services, DHS inherits many of these management challenges. For example, in 1997 we reported that INS lacked clearly defined priorities and goals and that its organizational structure was fragmented both programmatically and geographically. Additionally, after a reorganization in 1994, field managers still had difficulty determining whom to coordinate with, when to coordinate, and how to communicate with one another because they were unclear about headquarters offices’ responsibilities and authority. We also reported that INS had not adequately defined the roles of its two key enforcement programs—Border Patrol and investigations—which resulted in overlapping responsibilities, inconsistent program implementation, and ineffective use of resources. INS’s poor communication led to weaknesses in policies and procedures. In later reports, we reported that broader management challenges affected efforts to implement programs to control the border, deter alien smuggling, reduce immigration benefit fraud, reduce unauthorized alien employment, remove criminal aliens, and manage the immigration benefit application workload and reduce the backlog. INS was abolished, effective in 2003, by the Homeland Security Act of 2002, and its functions were transferred to three agencies within the Department of Homeland Security. INS’s Immigration Services Division, responsible for processing applications for immigration benefits, was placed in CIS, which reports directly to the Deputy Secretary of DHS. INS’s interior enforcement programs—investigations, intelligence, and detention and removal—were placed in ICE. Within ICE, investigators and intelligence analysts from former INS and the U.S. Customs Service were merged into the investigations and intelligence offices, while staff from former INS’s detention and removal program were placed in the detention and removal office. CBP incorporated inspectors from former INS, Customs, and Agriculture and Plant Health Inspection Service, as well as former INS’s Border Patrol agents. CBP and ICE both report to the Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security, who in turn reports to the Deputy Secretary of the DHS. See figure 1 for the organizational position of immigration programs in DHS. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) (Secretary) CBP, CIS, and ICE each have a separate chain of command and field structure. Under former INS, there were 33 district offices, each headed by a district director, who had responsibility for adjudications, detention and removal, inspections, intelligence, and investigations. In DHS, the responsibilities of the 33 district offices under the former INS were distributed among 33 CIS district offices, 27 Special Agent in Charge investigations field offices, 22 detention and removal field offices, 20 CBP offices for field operations (that oversee about 300 land, sea, and air ports of entry), and 6 field intelligence units. The former INS’s 20 border patrol sectors remained intact. CBP brought together INS and Customs inspections programs that, prior to the transition, largely worked side by side in many land ports of entry around the country and that shared similar missions. CIS was a direct transfer of the Immigration Services Division within INS, and the program remained largely intact. In contrast, ICE is a patchwork of agencies and programs that includes INS’s investigations and intelligence programs, Customs’ investigations and intelligence programs, Customs’ air and marine interdiction division, the Federal Protective Service, and the Federal Air Marshals. In combining the investigations programs, ICE has been tasked with merging INS investigators who specialized in immigration enforcement (e.g., criminal aliens) with Customs investigators who specialized in customs enforcement (e.g., drug smuggling). The integration of INS and Customs investigators into a single investigative program has involved blending of two vastly different workforces, each with its own culture, policies, procedures, and mission priorities. Both programs were in agencies with dual missions that prior to the merger had differences in investigative priorities. For example, INS primarily looked for illegal aliens and Customs primarily looked for illegal drugs. In addition, INS investigators typically pursued administrative violations, while Customs investigators typically pursued criminal violations. Most field officials with whom we spoke in CBP, CIS, and ICE characterized communication and coordination with their local counterparts as good or excellent. Officials also said that positive relationships were primarily based on previous working relationships built while the programs— particularly inspections, detention and removal, and adjudications—were all within one agency, INS or Customs. About a quarter of the officials we interviewed across the immigration programs in CBP, CIS, and ICE also said that they would like a clearer understanding of the roles and responsibilities of each program. Those ICE officials who characterized communication and coordination as fair to poor attributed the inability to resolve their problems to various reasons, depending on the program; these included a lack of communication or conflicts in roles with the Border Patrol and the intelligence program’s distance from, and production of useful work for, the SAC offices. Near the end of our work, some headquarters and field officials in CBP, CIS, and ICE told us efforts were under way, and agreed upon, to clarify issues related to roles and responsibilities that have arisen. Communication among CBP, CIS, and ICE occurs at the headquarters and field level in different ways. All three bureaus have liaisons at the headquarters level. For example, ICE has liaisons to CBP and CIS that serve as points of contact and facilitators in convening the appropriate officials for discussions on cross-cutting issues, and ICE’s liaisons are to contact those agencies’ liaisons should ICE initiate discussions. In the field, officials in CBP, CIS, and ICE said they typically used meetings to maintain contact with one another, although the frequency of meetings varied—from not at all to bimonthly—and there are no requirements for field officials to meet regularly. Officials who said that they met regularly also said that they found these meetings to be useful in sharing information and addressing issues that cut across programs. Overall, most field officials we contacted who responded to this question in CBP, CIS, and ICE characterized communication and coordination among their programs as good or excellent. Most SACs and ASACs said that communication and coordination with CBP’s inspections, CIS’s adjudications, and ICE’s detention and removal programs were good or excellent. On the other hand, about one-third of SACs and ASACs who responded to this question believed that communication and coordination with CBP’s Border Patrol and ICE’s intelligence programs were fair to poor. Some officials said they expressed this view concerning communication and coordination with the Border Patrol because there were conflicts or overlaps in roles and responsibilities or a lack of communication. SACs and ASACs who characterized communication and coordination with ICE’s intelligence program as fair or poor said they did so for such reasons as the intelligence office was not in close proximity to the SAC office or they did not feel that intelligence analysts were producing analyses useful to the SAC office. Table 1 presents the responses by ICE’s SACs and ASACs regarding communication and coordination with CBP, CIS, and other ICE programs. Many SACs and ASACs indicated that their positive views of communication and coordination with staff from other programs were primarily based on previous working relationships built while the programs were all in INS or Customs. In addition, officials we contacted in CIS and CBP, and other officials in ICE, said that they also relied on working relationships that existed before the transfer to facilitate communication and coordination on cross-cutting issues. Those SACs and ASACs who responded that they relied to a little or no extent on pre- existing working relationships said that they provided such a response because they did not have a prior relationship to rely upon. In addition, such informal means of maintaining communication and coordination among program officials, while helpful, can be short-lived as personnel retire or resign. For the long term, processes that provide a systematic way of building and maintaining such relationships among program staff provide better assurance of effective communication and coordination. Providing guidance that outlines roles and responsibilities among the programs is one way of helping to achieve systematic maintenance of such relationships.