United States cannot locate 600,000 foreign fugitives

27 March 2007

In a particularly embarrassing admission, the inspector general for the United States' Department of Homeland Security released a report on Monday indicating that they cannot account for over 600,000 foreigners who were ordered to leave the country.

More than $204 million was allocated to create 52 fugitive operations teams since 2003, but the report stresses that there is "insufficient detention capacity, limitations of an immigration database and inadequate working space."

As estimated by the report, the number of illegal immigrants in the United States is between 11.5 million and 12 million, and about 5.4% of them are believed to be "fugitive aliens," those who have failed to leave the country after being ordered out.

Other estimates generally are that there are 12 million to 13 million illegals in the U.S., but a strong effort to crack down on illegal immigrants in the past year is likely to have reduced that number somewhat.

Other factors that limit the teams' effectiveness are insufficient staffing, the report said. The inspector general found there is not enough bed space available to detain such fugitives and that agents are hampered by an inaccurate database.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Homeland Security Department aimed to eliminate the case backlog of fugitive aliens by the end of 2012, although a field manual put the timetable at 2009. However, "despite the efforts of the teams, the backlog of fugitive alien cases has increased each fiscal year since the program was established in February 2002," the inspector general said.

Funding for the 2007 fiscal year allows for up to 75 teams to be fielded to cope with the backlog.

The report cited ICE Detention and Removal Office officers who said the agency is experiencing a "lack of adequate detention space" that "limits the effectiveness" of fugitive operations.

Fugitive apprehension teams face a backlog that has steadily increased, the report stated. More than 623,000 cases were in the pipeline as of August 2006, the IG found.

"The backlog of fugitive alien cases has increased each fiscal year since the program was established in February 2002," the report said. From September 2001 to August 2006 -- the most recent data available in the report -- the total number fugitives rose nearly 88%.

The backlog "is growing at a rate of more than 50,000 fugitives per year" and that it "is highly improbable that it will be eliminated in the near future." Federal officials have rented jail space from local institutions, but those are beginning to fill up, the sources said.

The report praised fugitive operations teams for coordinating data and intelligence with other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, but said that ICE needs to complete the hiring process for the illegal immigrant tracking teams. The report said the agency's failure to do so reduced its effectiveness.

At the beginning of the month, DHS reported that there is no estimate yet for when Homeland Security will have a program to track visitors to the United States that will be able to verify departures.