Alien Smuggling

Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) data show that during the last two fiscal years, alien smuggling has increased, and INS predicts that the smuggling will continue to grow. INS issued an anti-smuggling strategy in 1997 that contains domestic and international components. The domestic component calls for (1) INS to focus its investigations on major smuggling operations and (2) INS' anti-smuggling investigative field units to coordinate their activities and share anti-smuggling intelligence with each other. INS' initial efforts will be directed at South/Central Texas, which is one of the three major alien smuggling corridors in the United States. The international component calls for INS to cooperate with foreign governments to disrupt alien smuggling in countries that are either major sources of illegal immigration or transit routes for aliens seeking to enter the United States. Several factors may have impeded INS' ability to implement and evaluate the effectiveness of the domestic component of its strategy. These factors include a lack of program coordination, the absence of an automated case-tracking and management system, and limited performance measures. INS' intelligence program has been impeded by a lack of understanding among field staff on how to report intelligence information, a lack of staff to carry out intelligence work at most INS district offices, and a cumbersome process of organizing data that does not allow for rapid retrieval and analysis. As a result, INS is limited in its ability to identify targets for enforcement and to focus its resources on efforts that would have the greatest impact. In the international area, INS may not be having more than a temporary impact on alien smuggling overseas. Impediments in this area include corruption among some foreign officials and the lack of laws against alien smuggling in some countries. Without improvements in its programs, INS' ability to disrupt and deter increasingly sophisticated and organized alien smugglers and dismantle their operations will continue to be hampered.

GAO noted that: (1) in fiscal year (FY) 1999, 14 percent of all Border Patrol apprehensions were smuggled aliens compared to 9 percent in 1997; (2) according to INS, aliens from countries other than Mexico purportedly rely more heavily on organized smugglers and an increase in apprehensions of aliens from other countries would indicate an increase in alien smuggling; (3) apprehensions of aliens from countries other than Mexico increased from 58,000 in FY 1997 to about 81,000 in FY 1999; (4) INS believes that alien smuggling will become a more significant enforcement problem in the future because alien smuggling organizations are expected to become more sophisticated, organized, and complex; (5) INS issued an anti-smuggling strategy in 1997 that contains domestic and international components; (6) the domestic component calls for: (a) INS to focus its investigations on major smuggling operations; and (b) INS' anti-smuggling investigative field units to coordinate their activities and share anti-smuggling intelligence information with each other; (7) as part of the domestic component, the strategy calls for INS' Intelligence Program to optimize its ability to collect, analyze, and disseminate intelligence information to identify targets for enforcement and help focus INS' anti-smuggling resources on efforts that would have the greatest impact; (8) the international component includes INS' conducting operations in cooperation with foreign governments to disrupt alien smuggling in countries that either are major sources of illegal immigration or through which illegal aliens travel on their way to the United States; (9) INS' ability to implement and evaluate the effectiveness of the domestic component of its strategy is impeded by several factors: (a) lack of program coordination; (b) absence of an automated case tracking and management system; and (c) limited performance measures; (10) as part of its international component, INS conducted operations in 34 countries between August 1995 and November 1999; (11) during these operations, INS assisted in intercepting undocumented aliens destined for the United States, trained foreign officials on migration controls, and provided assistance in prosecuting alien smugglers; (12) however, there have been impediments to INS' ability to have more than a temporary impact on alien smuggling overseas; and (13) according to INS and Department of State officials, these impediments include corruption of some foreign officials and the lack of laws against alien smuggling in some countries.

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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