Lack Of Interagency Cooperation Hindered Immigration Policies, Says GAO
In March 2021, U.S. Border Patrol established a new process to reduce agents’ administrative processing times by releasing noncitizen family units without Notices to Appear (NTA). Instead, Border Patrol gave families a Notice to Report (NTR) to their local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office. However, this process faced significant challenges according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last month. According to GAO, Border Patrol and ICE struggled to cooperate on the new processes but learned lessons from this experience to improve overall outcomes.
According to GAO, as Border Patrol faced a 300 percent increase in individuals illegally entering the country in 2021, the agency quickly developed processes for reducing detention. Among these were the NTR system that enabled Border Patrol to collect certain personal and biometric information about the immigrant family unit. Then, Border Patrol released the families without charging a U.S. immigration law violation or providing an NTA. Border Patrol instructed the families to appear at a local ICE field office to receive their NTA. This process was in place until November 2021. Border Patrol implemented a new, but similar system utilizing humanitarian parole–called parole plus alternatives to detention (ATD)– beginning in July 2021.
GAO found that Border Patrol developed and implemented the NTR policy “over the course of a few days.” As a result, Border Patrol developed the system with little advance planning and discussion with Border Patrol sectors or ICE field offices. For example, Border Patrol Officials at the Rio Grande Valley sector told GAO they did not participate in the planning for the new NTR process, nor did they receive advance notice of implementation. Instead, Border Patrol instructed the sector to begin implementing the guidance the day after the sector received it. In total, 81 percent of NTR notices went to family unit members in the Rio Grande Valley sector.
The lack of advance planning and consultation with ICE and relevant sectors resulted in significant implementation challenges, according to GAO.
ICE quickly became concerned that only a small proportion of family units released with NTRs reported to field offices as required. Further, Border Patrol did not require family units to report to a specific field office. Border Patrol merely gave family units a list of local offices and let the unit decide where to report. This made it difficult for field offices to track if and when units would be reporting to them.
ICE also told GAO that Border Patrol failed to obtain complete and valid destination addresses for many family units Border Patrol sectors processed. Specifically, GAO reported that Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) headquarters told the oversight body, “Addresses Border Patrol agents initially collected in the Rio Grande Valley sector were often incomplete or invalid. For example, officials stated that Border Patrol sometimes recorded the onward destination state but not a street or city. These officials also stated that the addresses were sometimes associated with an apartment building, but the apartment number was not included. Or, they stated agents may have misspelled the address in the data system or listed an ERO field office as the family unit’s destination address.”
ERO headquarters notified Border Patrol of these concerns. In June 2021, Border Patrol released guidance to sector employees emphasizing the importance of proper record collection and reiterating the requirement that agents populate the domestic U.S. address tab in Border Patrol’s system. As a result, the percentage of complete destination addresses increased from about 40 percent from March to June 2021, to more than 90 percent in July 2021.
When Border Patrol began implementing humanitarian parole efforts in July 2021, it worked with ICE to address the challenges identified during the NTR process rollout.
“In particular, Border Patrol and ERO determined that Border Patrol agents are to provide the head of household for each family unit an A- number. By giving the head of household an A-number, Border Patrol officials stated they can more easily share information with ERO on those who are required to report to ERO field offices,” GAO explained.
Overall, Border Patrol was able to collect complete information for about 94 percent of family unit members from July 2021 through February 2022. In addition to improving data collection, GAO found that ICE and Border Patrol successfully took steps to improve their data sharing.
“Border Patrol gave ERO access to more data on those processed with an NTR or under parole plus ATD within CBP’s Unified Immigration Portal. In the summer of 2021, Border Patrol developed a dashboard within the portal that provided ERO with access to summary information on those processed with NTRs and under parole plus ATD. ERO headquarters officials told us that they used Border Patrol’s data in the portal to create their own internal dashboard to monitor ERO’s efforts to process family units and issue Notices to Appear.”
GAO continued to explain ICE and Border Patrol’s ongoing efforts to combat future border surges and enforcement removal proceedings where appropriate. While ICE has faced challenged in initiating removal proceedings for family unit members issued NTSs and processed under the humanitarian parole system, GAO reports that efforts are underway to address these challenges.