Federal Reports

We found that a former FWS employee misused their Government travel credit card for personal expenses totaling over $37,000.

ICE officers did not always perform risk classification assessments to ensure they appropriately detained or released noncitizens held in ICE custody. According to a 2012 email message from the Executive Associate Director, ICE officers are responsible for completing the risk classification assessment for detained noncitizens unless they are subject to mandatory detention or removal from the United States within 5 days. However, in FY 2023, ICE officers did not conduct a risk assessment for 79,977 (33 percent) of 244,376 detained noncitizens. This noncompletion rate was higher in FY 2022, when ICE did not conduct risk classification assessment for 129,250 (43 percent) of 302,758 detained noncitizens.

We performed our inspection to determine whether the U.S. Department of Education (Department) ensured that contractors and grantees notified employees in writing of the whistleblower protections provided under 41 United States Code 4712 (Section 4712). We found that the Department did not adequately ensure that contractors and grantees notified employees in writing of the protections provided under Section 4712. Specifically, we found that the Department did not always include the required contractor employee whistleblower protections clause in contract awards, did not include a sufficient reference to whistleblower protections in its Grant Award Notifications, and did not have a process in place to ensure that contractors and grantees actually notified their employees of the whistleblower protections. We made 4 recommendations to address the issues identified.