Federal Reports

During our unannounced inspection of Pulaski County Jail, we identified violations of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention standards that threatened the health, safety, and rights of detainees. In addressing COVID-19, Pulaski did not consistently enforce precautions including use of facial coverings and social distancing, which may have contributed to repeated COVID-19 transmissions at the facility. Pulaski did not meet standards for classification, medical care, segregation, or detainee communication. We found that the facility was not providing a color-coded visual identification system based on the criminal history of detainees, causing inadvertent comingling of a detainee with significant criminal history with detainees who had no criminal history. The facility generally provided sufficient medical care, but did not provide emergency dental services and the medical unit did not have procedures in place for chronic care follow-up. We also found that the facility was not consistently providing required oversight for detainees in segregation by conducting routine wellness checks. Finally, we found deficiencies in staff communication practices with detainees. Specifically, ICE did not specify times for staff to visit detainees and could not provide documentation that it completed facility visits with detainees during the pandemic. We did find that Pulaski generally complied with the ICE detention standard for grievances. We made five recommendations to ICE’s Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) to ensure the Chicago ERO Field Office overseeing Pulaski addresses identified issues and ensures facility compliance with relevant detention standards. ICE concurred with all five recommendations.

For our audit of NIST’s Working Capital Fund for fiscal year ended September 30, 2019, our objective was to determine whether budgetary controls over the fund were adequate. Specifically, the audit focused on determining whether the fund was (1) recovering the full cost of reimbursable services; (2) appropriately accounting for advances and carryover balances; and (3) maintaining a reasonable fund balance, in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies.We contracted with Ollie Green & Company, CPAs, LLC, LLC (OG&C)—an independent firm—to perform this audit of NIST in accordance with Government Auditing Standards. Our office oversaw the progress of this audit; however, OG&C is solely responsible for the attached report and the conclusions expressed in it. We do not express any conclusions about the adequacy of the fund’s budgetary controls, including its recovery of the full cost of reimbursable services, accounting for advances and carryover balances, and reasonableness of the fund balance in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies.

We completed a follow-up inspection of Pine Hill School to determine what progress had been made to correct the issues identified in our prior reports and determine whether the facility conditions have changed since our last reviews.We found that the school addressed many of the issues identified in our previous reports and that the overall facility conditions had improved. Specifically, Indian Affairs (IA) and the school implemented 9 of the 12 recommendations from our 2016 inspection and addressed a number of safety and health issues we previously identified including the inoperable fire alarm system.However, some of the issues identified in our 2016 inspection remain unresolved—mainly the extensive water damage and mold in the library, kindergarten classroom, and the gymnasium, as well as general deficiencies that were present throughout the school. We also found that Pine Hill School’s 25,000-square-foot dormitory remained significantly underused and that the IA’s facility inventory continued to be inaccurate, even though the IA reported that it had made corrections to its inventory since our last review.We also identified additional safety, health, and security risks during this inspection not covered in our 2016 inspection. For example, routine inspections of critical equipment and potential indoor environmental contaminants were not regularly completed and access to potentially dangerous areas was not restricted. Although the IA conducted annual safety and health inspections at the school as required, we found that neither the IA nor the school could confirm that the deficiencies identified during those inspections were addressed. Furthermore, an IA official informed us that it was not tracking deficiencies identified during safety and health inspections to confirm they were being addressed. We made 13 new recommendations to ensure that the progress made to date will be maintained, and that future improvements will properly address many of the long-standing facility issues facing the school. We also recommended that the Office of Financial Management reopen one recommendation from our previous report that we found was not addressed, and we repeated one recommendation from our prior inspection report that had not yet been addressed.