Criminal Aliens

Majority Deported From the New York City Area Not Listed in INS' Information Systems Gao ID: GGD-87-41BR March 3, 1987

In response to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) activities to: (1) investigate, apprehend, detain, and deport criminal aliens in the New York City area; and (2) prevent them from reentering the country.

GAO found that: (1) in many cases, INS has not entered information on deported aliens with criminal convictions into the two computer systems INS inspectors at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport use to detect deported aliens trying to reenter the country; (2) the National Automated Immigration Lookout System (NAILS) has no information on 94 percent of the deported criminal aliens from the New York area; (3) the INS New York District Office (NYDO) did not routinely complete the forms used to enter the names of deported aliens into NAILS because of understaffing; (4) the Central Index System (CIS) does not contain information on approximately 63 percent of the deported aliens, even though NYDO completed the necessary forms; and (5) INS could not determine whether the fault for incomplete forms lay with NYDO or headquarters, since no procedures existed to reconcile the NYDO data with the CIS output.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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