Department of Homeland Security

During 2019, there was a surge in Southwest Border crossings between ports of entry, resulting in 851,508 Border Patrol apprehensions and contributing to what senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials described as an “unprecedented border security and humanitarian crisis.” Our...

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) does not effectively coordinate and share best practices to enhance security across the commercial facilities sector. Specifically, CISA does not coordinate within DHS on security assessments to prevent potential overlap, does not always...

We identified 16 allegations of race-based harassment involving cadets between 2013 and 2018 that the Coast Guard Academy (the Academy) was aware of and had sufficient information to investigate and address through internal hate and harassment procedures. The OIG identified issues in how the Academy...

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Office of Field operations (OFO) personnel at ports of entry had separated 60 asylum-seeking families between May 6 and July 9, 2018, despite CBP’s claim that it had separated only 7 such families. More than half of those separations were based solely on the...

DHS OIG's work during this period has been impacted by the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic and the President's National Emergency Proclamation in March. Since that time, the office has initiated critically important pandemic-related work including a Verification Review of DHS' Pandemic Activities; a...

We determined that although U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) identified and targeted high-risk cargo shipments, CBP did not always prevent air carriers from transporting high-risk air cargo from foreign airports into the United States. This occurred because neither CBP nor the Transportation...

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) does not monitor the Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) to ensure it continues to fulfill needed capabilities. Although the AIT met the requirement for system availability, TSA did not monitor the AIT’s probability of detection rate and throughput rate...

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is not effectively designating Surge Capacity Force (SCF) volunteers and managing the SCF program during disaster operations. In 2017, FEMA was not prepared to deploy SCF Tier 4 volunteers rapidly and efficiently because FEMA had neither a clear...

DHS complied with the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (IPERA) in fiscal year 2019 by meeting all six of the IPERA requirements. DHS also complied with Executive Order 13520, Reducing Improper Payments. Additionally, we reviewed DHS’ processes and procedures for estimating its annual...

KPMG, LLP found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did not always ensure Virgin Islands Territorial Emergency Management Agency (VITEMA) and the Virgin Islands Department of Education (VIDE) established and implemented policies, procedures, and practices to account for and expend...