Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), Fifth Edition, (Newton Square, PA: 2013). United States. Second, those not eligible for the Visa Waiver Program and not otherwise exempt from the visa requirement must obtain a visa from a U.S. consular office overseas. Upon arriving at a port of entry, nonimmigrants must undergo inspection by CBP officers, who determine whether or not they may be admitted into the United States. If CBP determines a nonimmigrant is admissible, he or she is granted an authorized period of admission. This period may be for a specific length of time, which CBP designates by assigning a specific “admit until” date, or for as long as the nonimmigrant maintains a particular status. For example, in general, foreign students are eligible to remain in the United States for “duration of status,” meaning as long as they are enrolled in and attending a qualified education program or engaging in authorized practical training following completion of studies. An overstay is a nonimmigrant who is legally admitted to the United States for an authorized period but remains in the country illegally after that period expired without obtaining an extension of stay or a change of status or meeting other specific conditions, such as claiming asylum. This includes a nonimmigrant admitted for duration of status who fails to maintain that status, such as a student who is no longer pursuing a full course of study at an approved educational institution or engaging in authorized practical training following completion of studies. In-country overstays refer to nonimmigrants who have exceeded their authorized periods of admission and remain in the United States without lawful status, while out-of-country overstays refer to individuals who have departed the United States but who, on the basis of arrival and departure information, stayed beyond their authorized periods of admission. Federal law establishes consequences for foreign nationals who overstay their authorized periods of admission. Three DHS components and offices—CBP, ICE, and OBIM—are primarily responsible for taking action to identify and address overstays, as shown in table 1. In addition, the Department of State is responsible for ensuring that individuals who have previously overstayed and are ineligible for a visa do not receive one when applying for a visa to the United States at consular offices overseas. Federal agencies use various databases to determine whether nonimmigrants have potentially overstayed their authorized periods of admission to the United States. As shown in table 2, several databases, in particular, provide key information on foreign nationals’ arrival in and departure from the United States, foreign nationals’ applications to change status once in the United States, and the status of foreign students. ICE primarily analyzes biographic entry and exit data collected at land, air, and sea ports of entry to identify potential overstays. ICE identifies both in-country and out-of-country overstays by analyzing and comparing biographic data maintained in ADIS against information in other databases to find matches that demonstrate that a nonimmigrant may have, for instance, departed the country or filed an application to change status and thus is not an overstay. In particular, ICE analysts use ADIS to identify arrival records for which the subject’s admit until date has passed and for whom DHS does not have a corresponding departure record (unmatched arrival records), which may indicate that the subject of the record is an in-country overstay. For these records of potential overstays, ICE analysts conduct automated searches, such as searching for immigration benefit application information through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. ICE analysts also determine whether the subject of the record meets ICE’s overstay enforcement priorities based on national security and public safety criteria. ICE prioritizes investigation of overstay leads based on the perceived risk each lead is likely to pose to national security and public safety as determined by threat analysis. In order to prioritize investigation of overstay leads, ICE uses an automated system to assign each overstay lead a priority ranking based on threat intelligence information. For the records that meet ICE’s overstay enforcement priorities, ICE analysts then conduct manual searches of other databases to determine, for example, if the individual applied for refugee or asylum status. For these priority records, if ICE analysts are unable to identify evidence of a departure or a change in status, they search for the nonimmigrant’s current U.S. address, and if they are able to identify an address, they send the lead to the relevant ICE HSI field office for investigation. For cases in which ICE’s analysis shows that a nonimmigrant visa holder departed the United States after the admit until date—an out-of-country overstay—and the departure was more than 90 days after the nonimmigrant’s authorized period of admission expired, ICE creates a lookout that CBP officers at ports of entry and State Department officials at overseas consulates can access to determine whether that nonimmigrant is eligible for readmission at ports of entry or can receive a new visa upon application at a U.S. consulate. Beginning in 1996, federal law has required the implementation of an integrated entry and exit data system for foreign nationals. Additionally, the Immigration and Naturalization Service Data Management Improvement Act of 2000 required implementation of an integrated entry and exit data system for foreign nationals that would provide access to and integrate foreign national arrival and departure data that are authorized or required to be created or collected under law and are in an electronic format in certain databases, such as those used at ports of entry and consular offices. In 2003, DHS initiated the US-VISIT program to develop a comprehensive entry and exit system to collect biometric data from aliens traveling through United States ports of entry. In 2004, US-VISIT initiated the first step of this program by collecting biometric data on aliens entering the United States at 115 airports and 14 sea ports. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 required the Secretary of Homeland Security to develop a plan to accelerate full implementation of an automated biometric entry and exit data system that matches available information provided by foreign nationals upon their arrival in and departure from the United States. Since 2004, we have issued a number of reports on DHS’s efforts to implement a biometric entry and exit system. For example, in February and August 2007, we found that DHS had not adequately defined and justified its proposed expenditures for exit pilots and demonstration projects and that it had not developed a complete schedule for biometric In September 2008, we further reported that DHS exit implementation. was unlikely to meet its timeline for implementing an air exit system with biometric indicators, such as fingerprints, by July 1, 2009, because of several unresolved issues, such as opposition to the department’s published plan by the airline industry. In November 2009, we found that DHS had not adopted an integrated approach to scheduling, executing, and tracking the work that needed to be accomplished to deliver a In our prior reports, we have made comprehensive exit solution.recommendations intended to help ensure that biometric exit was planned, designed, developed, and implemented in an effective and efficient manner. DHS generally agreed with our recommendations. DHS has implemented or taken actions to implement some of these recommendations; however, DHS has not addressed others. For example, in March 2012, DHS reported that the US-VISIT office was adopting procedures to comply with the nine scheduling practices we recommended in our November 2009 report and has conducted training on our scheduling methodology. However, DHS did not implement our February 2007 recommendations to (1) report to Congress on US-VISIT program risks associated with not fully satisfying legislative conditions, such as compliance with Office of Management and Budget capital planning and investment control guidance, and (2) limit planned expenditures for program management-related activities until such investments are economically justified and have well-defined plans. DHS reviewed a backlog of records of potential overstays that we DHS uses ADIS to match departure previously identified in April 2011.records to arrival records and subsequently close records for individuals with matching arrival and departure records because either (1) the individual departed prior to the end of his or her authorized period of admission and is therefore not an overstay, or (2) the individual departed after the end of his or her authorized period of admission and is therefore an out-of-country overstay. Unmatched arrival records—those records in ADIS that do not have corresponding departure records—remain open and indicate that those individuals are potential in-country overstays. In April 2011, we reported that, as of January 2011, ADIS contained a backlog of 1.6 million unmatched arrival records that DHS had not reviewed through automated or manual processes. This backlog included prior nonpriority overstay leads that had not been reviewed, nonpriority leads that continued to accrue on a daily basis, and leads generated in error as a result of CBP system changes. DHS officials attributed this backlog to resource constraints and US-VISIT’s focus on reviewing leads that met ICE’s priorities. In the summer of 2011, DHS completed a review of these 1.6 million records against various national security and law enforcement databases to determine if the subjects of these records had already left the United States and to help identify if the subjects posed any potential national security or public safety threats. As a result, DHS closed approximately 863,000 records for individuals who had departed, were in status, or had adjusted status, and removed them from the backlog by conducting additional automated checks. Second, DHS reviewed the remaining 757,000 records against national security and law enforcement databases to identify potential national security or public safety threats. As part of this national security and public safety review, DHS also reviewed approximately 82,000 additional records identified by CTCEU that were unresolved or had not yet undergone full review because they did not meet ICE’s enforcement priorities (a total of approximately 839,000 combined records).