Federal Reports

We determined DHS law enforcement components did not consistently collect DNA from arrestees as required. Of the five DHS law enforcement components we reviewed that are subject to these DNA collection requirements, only Secret Service consistently collected DNA from arrestees. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Federal Protective Service inconsistently collected DNA, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) collected no DNA. DHS did not adequately oversee its law enforcement components to ensure they properly implemented DNA collection. Based on our analysis, we project the DHS law enforcement components we audited did not collect DNA for about 212,646, or 88 percent, of the 241,753 arrestees from fiscal years 2018 and 2019. Without all DHS arrestees’ DNA samples in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s criminal database, law enforcement likely missed opportunities to receive investigative leads based on DNA matches. Additionally, DHS did not benefit from a unity of effort, such as sharing and leveraging processes, data collection, and best practices across components. We recommended DHS oversee and guide its law enforcement components to ensure they comply with collection requirements. DHS concurred with all four of our recommend.

We determined that before July 12, 2018, migrant parents did not consistently have the opportunity to reunify with their children before removal. Although DHS and ICE have claimed that parents removed without their children chose to leave them behind, there was no policy or standard process requiring ICE officers to ascertain, document, or honor parents’ decisions regarding their children. As a result, from the time the Government began increasing criminal prosecutions in July 2017, ICE removed at least 348 separated parents without documenting whether those parents wanted to leave their children in the United States. In fact, ICE removed some parents without their children despite having evidence the parents wanted to bring their children back to their home country. In addition, we found that some ICE records purportedly documenting migrant parents’ decisions to leave their children in the United States were significantly flawed. We made two recommendation that will ensure ICE documents separated migrant parents’ decisions regarding their minor children upon removal from the United States, and develops a process to share information with Government officials to contact parents for whom ICE lacks documentation on reunification preferences. ICE concurred with our recommendations.

Payment Integrity Information Act Compliance Report for Fiscal Year 2020

This audit report shows LEC noted that the FCC was in compliance for eight of its ten programs that were identified as susceptible to significant improper payments and reported a scope limitation for the USF-LL Program.