The Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of
Investigations needs to better allocate investigative
resources, the Government Accountability Office has said.
OI said it focuses on cases that seem to have a connection
with national security, but data from ICE’s case
management system indicate that OI’s investigative
activities mainly relate to the missions of its legacy
agencies, the Customs Service and the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, according to GAO-06-462T.
It said half of OI’s resources during fiscal 2004 and the
first half of fiscal 2005 were used for cases not likely
to be linked to national security — while between 10 and
15 percent of resources were used to investigate national
security leads.
About 400 of OI’s 5,600 special agents worked full-time to
identify incarcerated aliens eligible for removal from the
United States, something that does not require the skill
of criminal investigators, GAO said.
OI relies on the judgment of field office staff as well as
national programs to allocate investigative resources, but
it needs a risk-management approach to determine what kinds
of violations represent the greatest risks for exploitation
by terrorists, according to the report.
It said the agency plans to shift investigators to other
ICE units and to study whether other functions could be
shifted to employees in a non-investigatory job series.
GAO said it has no evidence that OI has failed to
investigate any particular lead, it said a better management
approach is needed to ensure that OI strikes the right
balance among its different objectives.
While the office introduced some principles of risk-
management, GAO called for it to conduct a comprehensive
risk assessment of the customs and immigration systems to
determine the greatest risks for exploitation.
Further, OI needs to examine alternatives and allow risk-
based resource allocation decisions, as well as develop
outcome-based performance goals, said GAO.
It also said OI lacks sufficient systems to help ensure
ongoing monitoring and communications of vulnerabilities
discovered during its investigations.
