Department of Homeland Security

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) needs additional oversight to effectively store and destroy seized illicit drugs in its permanent vaults. Federal law requires CBP to destroy most seized drugs and retain samples as evidence to prosecute criminals. However, 86 percent of illegal drugs that...

During the course of the audit, we determined that FEMA provided hotel rooms to about 90,000 households (nearly 227,000 survivors) after the 2017 California wildfires and Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. However, FEMA did not oversee and manage the Transitional Sheltering Assistance (TSA) program...

We determined that U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) training approach and execution do not fully support the canine teams’ mission to detect smuggling of illegal narcotics, agriculture products, and humans at and between ports of entry. In fiscal year 2019, CBP decided to realign its...

Based on our review of 45 judgmentally sampled awards (15 non-competitive grants and 30 other than full and open competition [OTFOC] contracts), we found DHS complied with applicable laws and regulations. DHS officials supported award decisions with the required planning, market research...

This report offers DHS OIG’s initial observations on the PACR and HARP programs based on our March 2020 visit to the El Paso, Texas area and analysis of data and information provided by CBP and USCIS headquarters. We determined that CBP rapidly implemented the pilot programs and expanded them...

The DHS Privacy Office established a comprehensive framework to administer its privacy program. However, it does not yet have effective oversight to ensure consistent execution of its privacy program across DHS components. Specifically, the DHS Privacy Office has not established controls to ensure...

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE’s) Worksite Enforcement (WSE) program’s compliance, civil enforcement, and outreach activities are not as effective as they could be to support ICE’s immigration enforcement strategy. ICE officials did not consistently enforce ICE guidance, take timely...

DHS OIG issued a series of three reports between August 2014 and October 2016 examining DHS’ pandemic activities, including 28 recommendations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of DHS planning and response activities. We conducted this verification review to determine the adequacy and...

While U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) actions to implement prior OIG outage-related recommendations could not have prevented the onset of the nation-wide outage on August 16, 2019, the steps taken did help minimize the length and severity of disruptions to passenger screening. By...

Although the Imperial Regional Detention Facility (IRDF) generally complied with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention standards regarding classification of detainees according to risk, it did not meet the standards for segregation, facility condition, medical grievances, and...