OIG releases report on processing of undocumented immigrants

The Office of Inspector General (OIG), belonging to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is in charge of ensuring the integrity, excellence and efficiency of the US’ government in its regular practices.

The OIG recently released a report called “CBP Has Taken Steps to Limit Processing of Undocumented Aliens at Ports of Entry.”

It is important to clarify that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is one of the branches of DHS and is a border entity together with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Contact Motion Law if you have a pending immigration case in the US.

What is the OIG investigation based on?

Essentially, the OIG investigated the CBP organization and handling at the borders between May and June 2018, when the flow of asylum seekers increased due to DHS asking immigrants to reach authorized ports of entry and avoid cross borders illegally to apply for political asylum after entering the US.

Following this request, border entities needed to better handle the processing of asylum applications to prevent turning away hundreds of immigrants daily at authorized ports of entry.

However, the OIG investigation revealed that, instead of implementing protocols to improve the processing of asylum seekers, CBP took “several additional actions to limit the number of undocumented aliens processed each day at Southwest Border land ports of entry.”

Within the investigation findings, the OIG discovered that seven ports of entry were closed during that period of time and were not processing undocumented immigrants, so they were referred to other authorized ports of entry, preventing them from requesting legal entry or international protection through humanitarian programs such as political asylum. This happened without public notice.

Adding to that, to prevent ports of entry from becoming overcrowded, CBP implemented a practice known as “Queue Management,” launched in 2016, which states that immigrants must put their names on a waiting list until CBP has enough space, staff and time to process requests.

Therefore, hundreds of immigrants could not reach the US’ authorized ports of entry and were waiting in Mexico for the response of the CBP, but the border entity did not expedite processing of immigration applications, but, on the contrary, delayed the processes.

OIG recommendation

After the investigation’s findings came to light, the OIG made 3 recommendations to CBP:

1. CBP was required to process undocumented immigrants at the seven closed ports of entry.
2. CBP staff must have written training to know how to appropriately react with undocumented immigrants already within the US and whether they intend to apply for political asylum.
3. Border entities should more efficiently use available holding spaces to process asylum seekers and other undocumented immigrants.

According to the results of the investigation, CBP complied with recommendations 2 and 3, but did not comply with recommendation 1.

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