WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General has just issued a report detailing how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is ineffectively managing the deportations of undocumented immigrants who are not in custody but under ICE supervisions.
The investigation found deportation officers reported they are overwhelmed with caseloads to the point they have trouble keeping up with their responsibilities.
“You might work 18 hours a day, but you still won’t get caught up,” one officer interviewed for the report said.
The OIG found that deportation officers supervising non-detained immigrants may be so overworked they could pose a threat your safety.
“A heavy workload limited oversight of non-detained aliens in that geographic area that ICE had flagged as risks to national security,” the report states.
According to the report deportation officers supervising undocumented immigrants who are out of custody have a far greater workload than officers supervising those people in ICE custody.
This is the second time the OIG has looked into the policies and practices of ICE. This investigation was conducted to find systemic factors that might be hampering ICE’s ability to deport undocumented immigrants.
The OIG made five recommendations to ICE management:
- Comprehensively review, revise, update, and maintain ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations policies, procedures, and guidance to address gaps and outdated information.
- Comprehensively review Deportation Officer functions at field offices to determine staffing allocations for non-detained units and identify appropriately sized caseloads for Deportation Officers working with non-detained aliens.
- Based on a completed comprehensive review, develop a plan to identify and implement appropriate staffing of Deportation Officers.
- Develop a standardized training curriculum for all current and future Deportation Officers, including recurrent refresher training courses for docket review and detained and non-detained case management.
- Collaborate with the Department of State to identify potential mechanisms to address issues that hinder deportation efforts.
ICE’s management agreed with the findings of the OIG and stated they are already implementing changes to comply with the recommendations.
The comprehensive reviews will also allow the agency to further implement changes that fall in line with President Donald Trump’s most recent executive order, according to ICE.
ICE stated those changes should be fully implemented by January 31, 2018.