Department of Homeland Security

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has conducted almost no familial deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing to verify biological parent-child relationships, potentially missing opportunities to protect vulnerable migrant children from human smuggling fraud schemes. From September 2021 to September...

U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) inconsistent processes for identifying special interest aliens (SIAs) created disparities in alien screening. In July 2023, CBP’s Office of Field Operations (OFO) San Diego Field Office and the U.S. Border Patrol (Border Patrol) Yuma and El Centro sectors...

We found that none of the three Department of Homeland Security components responsible for end of parole activities—U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — were designated to monitor parole expiration and DHS did...

We rated the Department of Homeland Security’s information security program for fiscal year 2024 as “effective,” according to this year’s reporting instructions. We based this rating on our evaluation of the Department’s compliance with requirements of the Federal Information Security Modernization...

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) did not fully leverage its large-scale non-intrusive inspection (NII) systems to detect contraband coming into the United States, potentially wasting taxpayer funds, missing opportunities to detect and seize contraband, and losing an important tool to fight...

During our unannounced inspection of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Buffalo Federal Detention Facility (Buffalo) in Batavia, New York, we found that Buffalo’s staff generally complied with Performance-Based National Detention Standards 2011, as revised in December 2016, for...

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) fiscal year 2023 Operation Stonegarden performance measure—prosecuted narcotic cases—accurately reflected Operation Stonegarden’s contributions to the President’s National Drug Control Strategy (the Strategy). Specifically, FEMA’s prosecuted narcotic...

The United States Coast Guard (Coast Guard) did not meet its illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing interdiction goals for fiscal years 2023 and 2024. For both FYs, the Coast Guard set its interdiction goal at 40 percent. This goal reflects efforts to prevent illegal foreign fishing...

The Department of Homeland Security complied with the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA) during fiscal year 2024. According to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-123, an agency must meet all 10 PIIA requirements to comply, which DHS did. DHS also met OMB’s requirement to...

During our unannounced inspection of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Nye CountyDetention Center (Nye) in Pahrump, Nevada, we found that Nye’s staff complied with National Detention Standards 2019 (NDS 2019) for classification, access to law library and legal services, segregation...