Federal Reports

We found violations of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention standards undermining the protection of detainees’ rights and the provision of a safe and healthy environment. Although the Howard County Detention Center (HCDC) generally complied with ICE detention standards regarding communication, it did not meet the standards for detainee searches, food service, and record requirements for segregation and medical grievances. We determined HCDC excessively strip searched ICE detainees when leaving their housing unit to attend activities within the facility, in violation of ICE detention standards and the facility’s own search policy. In addition, HCDC failed to provide detainees with two hot meals per day, as required. For those in segregation, HCDC did not document that detainees received three meals per day and daily medical visits. Further, HCDC did not properly document the handling of detainee medical grievances. We made two recommendations to ICE’s Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) to ensure the Baltimore ERO Field Office overseeing HCDC addresses identified issues and ensures facility compliance with relevant detention standards. ICE concurred with both recommendations and is implementing a corrective action plan to address the concerns we identified.

Modernization has improved the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration (FIMA) ability to timely process policies and claims data, enhanced reporting capabilities, and provided more reliable address validation. Despite these improvements, the transition to PIVOT did not resolve longstanding data reliability issues, as FIMA migrated the vast majority of its historical legacy data, including errors, into the PIVOT system. FIMA also deployed PIVOT without adequate controls to prevent potentially erroneous transactions from being recorded in the system. We made three recommendations to improve the quality of data in the modernized NFIP system and educate stakeholders on data quality issues that exist in historical NFIP data. FEMA concurred with all three recommendations.

DHS OIG issued this management alert to notify the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Protective Service (FPS) of an urgent issue that requires immediate attention and action. DHS must take immediate action to: (1) Ensure that the Director of FPS has authority to designate DHS employees under 40 U.S.C. § 1315(b)(1); and (2) Ensure proper, by-name designation of any DHS employees authorized to exercise authority under 40 U.S.C. § 1315 to protect Federal property and persons on that property. During an ongoing review, we learned that the FPS Director did not properly designate DHS employees deployed to protect Federal properties under 40 U.S.C. § 1315(b)(1). Proper designation is important because deployed law enforcement officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, and U.S. Secret Service typically lack this precise scope of authority. Another effect of the FPS Director’s approach is that several law enforcement personnel were deployed to Portland, Oregon to augment FPS’ protection efforts, but may not have received training on 40 U.S.C. § 1315 before they were deployed.

Final financial statements audit for fiscal year 2020.

NGA OIG Fall Semiannual Report to Congress, 1 April - 30 September 2020