Thread: DHS Lacks Resources to Identify and Remove Visa Overstays, G

DHS Lacks Resources to Identify and Remove Visa Overstays, GAO Says

By: Mickey McCarter


05/04/2011 (12:00am)


Roughly 40 percent of illegal immigrants in the United States simply overstayed their legal visas once they are in the country, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has limited resources to identify and remove these overstays, congressional investigators reported Tuesday.

Limitations in manpower and a lack of an automated exit system for the US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) entry/exit program for identifying visa overstays complicate the ability of DHS to remove these illegal immigrants from the country, said the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in its report, Overstay Enforcement: Additional Mechanisms for Collecting, Assessing, and Sharing Data Could Strengthen DHS's Efforts but Would Have Costs.

About 4-5 million illegal immigrants overstay their visas, remaining in the United States after entering legally, according to estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center.

But US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the DHS agency responsible for removing overstays, has only dedicated about 3 percent of its investigative workforce hours to investigating them. ICE agents have arrested only 8,100 overstays since fiscal 2006, the GAO report noted.

ICE is considering augmenting its investigative workforce by assigning some non-criminal overstays to its Enforcement and Removal Operations Directorate, but it has not yet done so, leaving its Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Exploitation Unit its sole resource for removing overstays, the GAO report said. ICE has not moved forward with any planning on such an initiative, however, so GAO recommended that ICE set up a timeline to complete planning for addressing shortages in its overstay enforcement resources.

Moreover, DHS lacks the technological capability to flag overstays because its US-VISIT biometric registration system for foreign travelers does not have the capability to record their exit from the country. An exit system could register departures from the United States and potentially alert authorities of visa overstays, GAO said.

"In the absence of a biometric entry and exit system, DHS uses various methods for identifying overstays, primarily biographic data, and sharing of overstay information; however, DHS faces challenges in collecting departure data and does not share information about all categories of suspected overstays among its components," the report read.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), for instance, has not standardized the collection of departure forms from travelers leaving the country, the GAO report discovered.

While collecting these forms in a standard way would help DHS identify visa overstays, CBP would require funding to make physical modifications to some US land ports of entry and to staff them, officials told GAO.

"If the benefits outweigh the costs, such a mechanism could help DHS obtain more complete and reliable departure data for identifying overstays," the GAO report recommended.

The heads of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released the GAO report Tuesday, decrying the DHS limitations for identifying and removing visa overstays.

Five of the 19 hijackers responsible for carrying out the 9/11 terrorist attacks overstayed their visas, noted Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), committee chair, and Susan Collins (R-Maine), its ranking member. In addition, GAO reported that 36 of about 400 terrorists convicted by the United States since 9/11 had overstayed their visas to remain in the country.

"Despite numerous congressional and DHS efforts, we still lack an exit system that will effectively identify people who have overstayed their visas, and do so in real time," Lieberman said in a statement. "The reality is that US-VISIT remains a very troubled and ineffective program.

"Identifying individuals who overstay is a crucial component of securing our borders, and it is simply unacceptable that we are still unable to systematically identify people who overstay -- some of whom may be terrorists waiting to attack innocent Americans. I am asking Secretary [Janet] Napolitano to update the committee on current efforts within the Department to close this dangerous vulnerability," he added.

Collins lamented the lack of ICE resources dedicated to tracking down the roughly 40 percent of 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States due to visa overstays.

"I understand that only three percent of ICE efforts are focused on these cases. That seems insufficient and shortsighted as almost half of all unauthorized residents fall into this category," Collins said.

DHS agreed with the GAO recommendations, indicating ICE would plan for more resources to track and remove visa overstays in its fiscal 2013 budget projections and CBP would evaluate the potential of uniformly collecting departure information.

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Yet the government can find billions to fund benefits to illegals and, in fact, encourages them to take advantage of American taxpayers as much as possible.