A heavily redacted Office of Inspector General report finds the Biden-Harris administration “did not fully assess risks associated with releasing noncitizens without identification into the U.S. and allowing them to travel on domestic flights.”
The OIG report for the Department of Homeland Security issued on Monday focused on how Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials confirm the identity of illegal immigrants, and whether the Transportation Security Administration ensures illegal immigrants provide proof of identification “consistent with all other domestic travelers.”
The findings make clear federal officials “cannot always verify the identity of noncitizens without identification,” but TSA allows them to fly throughout the U.S. anyway.
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“Under current processes, CBP and ICE cannot ensure they are keeping high-risk noncitizens without identification from entering the country,” the report read. “Additionally, TSA cannot ensure its vetting and screening procedures prevent high-risk noncitizens who may pose a threat to the flying public from boarding domestic flights.”
Federal law states noncitizens without ID are not admissible into the country and shall be detained, but CBP and ICE officials are permitted to release illegal immigrants into the U.S. based on “various considerations,” according to the OIG.
“Prior to releasing these individuals, CBP and ICE immigration officers accept self-reported biographical information, which they use to issue various immigration forms,” according to the report. “Once in the United States, noncitizens can travel on domestic flights.”
The Inspector General requested data on the number of noncitizens without ID who were released into the U.S. from fiscal year 2021 through fiscal year 2023, but officials could not provide the numbers.
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“Because immigration officers are not required to document whether a noncitizen presented identification in the databases, the data we obtained may be incomplete,” the report read. “Therefore, neither CBP nor ICE could determine how many of the millions of noncitizens seeking entry into the United States each year entered without identification and whose self-reported biographic information was accepted.
“CBP and ICE immigration officers we interviewed acknowledged the risks of allowing noncitizens without identification into the country, yet neither CBP nor ICE conducted a comprehensive risk assessment for these noncitizens to assess the level of risk these individuals present and developed corresponding mitigation measures.”
The OIG also detailed the methods used by TSA to attempt to verify the identity of illegal immigrants using a CBP One app, though the risks that process poses as a screening tool were redacted in the report.
The report does, however, provide examples of weaknesses in CBP’s screening processes that has allowed dangerous immigrants into the country.
“For example, one noncitizen released into the United States in 2022 was later found to appear on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Terrorist Watchlist. We also identified at least two persons paroled into the United States as part of Operation Allies Refuge/Operation Allies Welcome that may have posed a threat to national security and the safety of local communities,” the report read.
“Finally, in June 2024, we reported that DHS’ biometrics system, the Automated Biometric Identification System, could not access all data from federal partners to ensure complete screening and vetting of noncitizens seeking admission into the United States,” the OIG wrote.
The report’s conclusion: “If CBP and ICE continue to allow noncitizens – whose identities immigration officers cannot confirm – to enter the country, they may inadvertently increase national security risks.”
The OIG offered recommendations for improving the vetting processes and assessing risks, while the Department of Homeland Security disputed the findings.
“Leadership … is concerned that the OIG’s analysis and conclusion in this draft report contains inaccurate statements, lacks important context, and is potentially misleading to readers of the report about the Department’s efforts to verify the identity of noncitizens seeking entry into the United States and screening noncitizens flying domestically,” DHS wrote in a Sept. 20 response.
“For example, it is important that readers understand CBP cannot make a categorical decision to detain all individuals without identification. Doing so would seriously risk exceeding DHS’s detention capacity and hamper DHS’s ability to prioritize detention for individuals identified as a possible national security or public safety risk.”
Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, aren’t buying the excuses.
“It’s embarrassing that the Biden-Harris administration needs an official government watchdog to tell them what anyone with the slightest bit of common sense intuitively understands,” U.S. Rep. Mark Green, chairman of Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement. “This administration should not be letting unvetted non-citizens roam free in our communities and get on planes, especially when their identities cannot even be verified.
“The colossal failures documented by the OIG are bad enough – even worse is that they are happening on a daily basis with the blessing of the Biden-Harris White House,” he said.
The OIG report was followed Thursday by another from the House Judiciary Committee that documented 1.7 million migrants that have entered the U.S. from countries that officials believe pose a national security threat to the U.S., Fox News reports.
“The report found that there were around 98,000 (special interest alien) encounters in FY 21, which went up to 482,705 in FY 22, then 597,058 in FY 23 and 531,768 in FY 24 so far,” according to the news site. “Of those, most were encountered at the southern border, with 95,705 southwest border encounters of special interest aliens in fiscal year 2021; 465,664 in 2022; 566,079 in 2023; and 504,215 in 2024 so far.”
The DHS OIG report cited CBP data that counted 3.2 million noncitizen encounters nationwide in fiscal year 2023, which included 2.4 million at the southern border.
ICE data released last week at the request of Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales revealed that as of July 21, 2024, there were 662,566 noncitizens with criminal histories on ICE’s national docket, including 13,099 convicted murderers, 15,811 convicted of sex assaults, 162,231 convicted of assault, and 56,533 with dangerous drug convictions, among many others.
The vast majority of those with criminal convictions or pending charges – 425,431 – are not detained by ICE and are free to roam the country.