Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 117
7
Conclusions and Recommendations
D
espite the challenges of producing reliable estimates of resource
needs for the components of the immigration enforcement system
for which the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is responsible, the
committee has identified specific opportunities to improve estimates of
resource needs. In addition, we see opportunities to improve the use of
available resources through analysis of the relative effectiveness of alter-
native ways of applying budget resources. A new approach to budgeting
may allow those resources to be applied more effectively to limit illegal
immigration and achieve other policy goals.
To improve budget estimates and to support better decisions about
the use of budget resources, the committee proposes elements of a new
model of budgeting for DOJ immigration enforcement, including changes
in the procedures used to develop budgets. The committee’s recom-
mended approach relies on new data and analysis, focuses on improving
the effectiveness of enforcement efforts, and offers DOJ more flexibility
in deploying whatever level of resources is available (through appropria -
tions) as an alternative to either seeking supplemental resources or adapt-
ing procedures in ways that may degrade performance. Given the shared
responsibility of DOJ and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) for the enforcement system, greater collaboration across DOJ com -
ponents and between DOJ and DHS—beginning with early discussion of
pending changes in policy or practice and including greater sharing of
information during the budget process—can be expected to improve bud-
117
OCR for page 118
118 BUDGETING FOR IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
get decisions for both departments and may lead to more cost-effective
use of the funds expended by each.
CONCLUSIONS: WHAT HAS BEEN LEARNED
Budgeting for immigration enforcement in DOJ involves several
unusual and challenging issues.
Over the past 10 years or so, apprehensions of unauthorized entrants
and residents have fallen substantially. Rates of net illegal entry are now
near zero. This downward trend would be expected to reduce demand for
the immigration enforcement functions that DOJ administers, but that has
not occurred. As detailed in the previous chapters, the demand for those
immigration enforcement-related functions has increased, as has the cost
per apprehension and removal.
The increases in costs reflect policy changes aimed at imposing
increased consequences on illegal entrants and more aggressive inter-
nal efforts to identify and remove illegal residents. Those policies have
resulted in higher proportions of those apprehended being subject to
civil or criminal prosecution, detention, incarceration, and/or administra-
tive removal. These historically specific factors, however, may give little
indication of the trend in future demand for DOJ enforcement when, for
instance, U.S. economic conditions improve.
Nature of the Budgeting Challenge
Although Congress, in its request for this study, indicated that the
Department of Justice has had unusual difficulty in formulating its bud -
get requests for immigration enforcement, only in a few instances in the
past 10 years has an apparent underestimate of funding requirements led
to significant requests for supplemental funding or other sizable adjust -
ments. Only on two occasions, both associated with reorganization of
immigration enforcement responsibilities in DOJ, were major adjust-
ments made to its original funding request. Rather, DOJ has adjusted its
operations to meet the changing demands on its parts of the enforcement
system.
Nonetheless, a distinct budgeting problem complicates DOJ immigra-
tion enforcement efforts. Surges in DHS resources and changes in federal
enforcement policies, strategy, and tactics—usually at DHS initiative—are
major sources of unanticipated demands, with consequences for DOJ’s
responsibilities. The volatility of apprehensions and policies that drive the
demand for DOJ enforcement services is often greater at a local or regional
level than at a national level.
Unanticipated demands for DOJ’s services have immediate and direct
OCR for page 119
119
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
consequences for how enforcement is conducted, commonly leading to
adjustments in operations to ensure that funding limits are not exceeded.
Changes in operations resulting from unanticipated resource constraints
have, on occasion, degraded the quality of operations and may have
impeded the effectiveness of enforcement efforts in limiting or reducing
illegal immigration.
CONCLUSION: Problems in estimating resources for immigra-
tion enforcement are more often likely to manifest themselves as
changes in the level or character of enforcement activity than as
requests for supplemental appropriations or other adjustments to
initial spending authority. Such adjustments have implications for
enforcement effectiveness.
The inherent characteristics of the immigration enforcement system
documented in this report, as well as the long lead times inherent in
budgeting, cast doubt on whether it is possible to rely on the projection
of past trends in activity or to use more complex statistical models to
improve estimates of the system’s future resource needs. The immigration
enforcement system will continue to evolve in unpredictable ways that
can change resource requirements substantially over periods as short as
1 or 2 years.
Moreover, the system is complex and pervaded by discretion at
regional and local levels. Discretion allows administrators and decision
makers to adapt to limits on local resource limits and changes in demand
for their services in varied and hard-to-anticipate ways by handling fewer
cases or handling them differently. These adaptations have consequences
for the system. Adapting to fixed resources by increasing backlogs or
minimizing consequences for violations of immigration law may actu-
ally reduce effectiveness in achieving the aims of enforcement. Bottle-
necks and case backlogs arising from mismatches between mandates and
resources may impede or alter enforcement. The likely effects include
at least temporary local reductions in the effectiveness of enforcement
efforts unless there are compensating efficiency gains. Yet whether or
not adaptation helps to maintain system performance, such adjustments
make it hard to define, much less to estimate, the proper level of funding
to provide to each system component.
DOJ’s budget history shows a striking capacity to adapt or “make do”
with the available resources. Making do, while admirable, can affect the
system in perverse ways as noted throughout this report. Ad hoc adapta-
tions in one arena may impinge elsewhere and generate inefficiencies.
The committee had neither the time nor resources to directly measure
the effect of budget stresses and subsequent adjustments on the effective-
OCR for page 120
120 BUDGETING FOR IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
ness of the system or its components in contributing to goals of immigra-
tion enforcement policy—such as reducing illegal entry or ensuring fair
and prompt adjudication of charges and status. In fact, as discussed in
Chapter 6 and below, the information on outcomes of enforcement activ-
ity needed for such analysis is not yet available in a form suitable for
analysis. Nor, has improved performance been a major focus of budgeting
for immigration enforcement. Because the enforcement process involves
important sets of activities in two departments, isolating the effects on
enforcement outcomes of changes in policy or activity in one or more
components will be challenging even when better information on the
determinants of variations in performance becomes available.
CONCLUSION: The enforcement system’s capacity to adjust opera-
tions is useful for dealing with changing and varied conditions,
but it impedes the ability of budget analysts and planners to assess
future resource requirements.
CONCLUSION: Because resource requirements cannot be reliably
estimated 18 to 24 months in advance of when they will be used
on the basis of past trends or using a formally specified statistical
model, better data and other approaches are needed to improve
estimates.
Opportunities to Improve Estimates and Mitigate Surprises
Despite the difficulties of budgeting for immigration enforcement,
the committee sees opportunities to reduce the number of surprises in the
system and to mitigate the effects of those that remain. DOJ’s estimates
of future resource needs might be “good” or “bad”—that is, more or less
accurate—given the information at hand, but even a “good” estimate can
result in an eventual discrepancy because external forces, such as changes
in policy or exogenous factors, might yield surprises. The U.S. Office of
Management and Budget (OMB), in weighing tradeoffs across agencies,
might request more—or less—funding; or Congress might appropriate
a different amount. The story, however, does not end there. The ways
in which DOJ and its constituent parts respond to shortfalls—or carry-
overs—can feed back into the system to make the gap larger or smaller.
Two kinds of responses are possible: ad hoc and coordinated. And
such responses can occur at various points in the process. Initially, at
least, one way to improve the system is through improved collection,
organization, and use of data, particularly for case histories of people
encountered or apprehended as illegal entrants. Another way is through
improved coordination and communication among those who set policy
OCR for page 121
121
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
direction; those who budget for component activities; and, at a local
level, between the people who implement policies for the system’s com-
ponents. Improvements in all three domains—information, coordination,
and communication—could be mutually reinforcing, with the potential to
create a “virtuous cycle”: better information can contribute to better coor-
dination and communication and better coordination and communication
can yield better information. Together, these improvements could reduce
the number of surprises that affect the system’s operation and contribute
to better responses to further surprises when there are local shortfalls or
carryovers.
On a more technical level, improved estimates can be obtained at
the outset—when budget estimates are first developed—by a deeper
understanding of how exogenous factors, policy, and administrative
practices play out over time at different activity levels. Such understand-
ing requires careful attention to bottlenecks and other constraints in
each locality and insight into the various ways that both unauthorized
immigrants and enforcement agencies and staff may adapt; the former
adapting to changes in policy and on-the-ground conditions and the lat-
ter adapting to changes in demands for their services. For this purpose,
a well-elaborated model of flows through the system—also requiring
better data—can be especially helpful.
Budget and policy planners, armed with a simple flow model informed
by estimates of how people with specified characteristics have been or
will be treated at various points in the process, could conduct such analy-
ses (although not fully quantifiable and ever evolving) to simulate how
specific changes—such as a surge of unauthorized immigrants, changes in
enforcement targets, or a new enforcement initiative—will ramify through
the system. Such analyses could improve resource planning and alloca -
tion whenever there are changes in immigrant flows. In initial estimation,
gains can be made both by improving analysis and redefining “surprises”
as “information” to feed into analysis; at the operating level, gains can be
made by helping to identify circumstances when independent responses
(by one agency or in one area) will be problematic.
Our analysis suggests that reported statistics on enforcement activity
may understate the level and misrepresent the relative components of that
activity, which would make them misleading indicators of demand for
both DHS and DOJ services. We compared summary data for fiscal 2008-
2010 case histories provided by DHS with published DHS statistics on
“deportable aliens located” and other activity measures: that comparison
suggests that the published data exclude a substantial number of cases.
For example, the published data apparently exclude people apprehended
by the Office of Field Operations (OFO) of the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) agency, which adds more than 200,000 to the approxi -
OCR for page 122
122 BUDGETING FOR IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
mately 1 million annual totals for each of those years. Such discrepancies
from the omission of OFO/ICE and some ICE apprehensions from the
numbers would likely distort activity estimates at a regional or local level,
which in turn would distort the profile of geographic distribution, activity
trends, and overall volumes for purposes of estimating the potential flow
of cases to DOJ’s agencies.
Improved data on case histories and analysis with those data to relate
policies, strategies, and resource use to achievement of specific policy out-
comes would help policy officials and planners better predict how their
policy and budget decisions are likely to play out through the system in
terms of increased backlogs, changes in marginal costs, and other needed
policy or budget adjustments.
As discussed in Chapter 6, the committee’s examination of case his -
tory data obtained from DHS suggests it may be possible with more work
to construct complete histories of how those with particular characteris -
tics and personal histories are handled by the enforcement system and
their various outcomes. Moreover, DHS is now able to establish with some
confidence the unique personal identity of each person apprehended,
based on electronic fingerprints and iris scans. The DHS case histories
data provided to the committee lack important information about certain
processing steps and still are in need of further validation. Even so, they
suggest the current feasibility of producing a base of information about
case flows and outcomes that can illuminate system dynamics. More
work is needed to integrate case records pulled from both departments’
administrative records and to combine these with personal histories of
each person’s previous encounters with law enforcement.
In the near future, a variety of analyses can be conducted of the ways
people move through the system, based on current or alternative policies
and given workload constraints of the system at various procedural steps.
Such analyses may eventually include, for example, “what if” analyses
of the effects of different enforcement procedures and strategies—such
as the imposition of increased “consequences”—on resource needs of
system components and, eventually, on outcomes. Such analyses would
help policy makers and budget planners understand how and why the
process treats differently immigrants with various characteristics, (i.e.,
age, country of origin, previous encounters with U.S. immigration or
law enforcement) across time and within and across jurisdictions, and
how those treatment differences affect their incentives, for example, to
attempt another illegal entry. Such analysis can also show how differ-
ences in enforcement methods and strategies affect the achievement of
enforcement policy objectives, including reduction in unauthorized immi-
gration, apprehension, and fair and prompt adjudication of charges and
OCR for page 123
123
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
status. Estimating the separate effects of specific policies and practices is
challenging, of course, but more such “what if” analyses will be possible
once the existing case histories are completed and made available for this
purpose.
CONCLUSION: As the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
systems become more integrated and if DHS and the Department
of Justice can develop procedures for timely recording and sharing
of information about the movement of people through the system,
a richer picture of immigrant flows through the enforcement system
can be constructed.
CONCLUSION: A new, fuller picture of system flows can be
used as a starting point for “what if” analyses and estimation of
how prospective changes in policy or practice may affect resource
requirements.
Opportunities to Identify Better Resource Uses
As discussed in Chapter 6, an important budgeting task is to identify
alternatives for more effective use of limited budget resources. And as
discussed in Chapter 3, the available evidence casts doubt on the effective-
ness of existing approaches to limiting unauthorized immigration.
The absence of information to link resource uses with performance
indicators makes it impossible to assess the effectiveness of enforcement
policies. Without the ability to relate costs to performance, it is not pos -
sible to determine whether resources are being used effectively or, more
importantly, how they could be used more effectively to achieve the leg-
islated goals of immigration enforcement. The first step to improve this
situation would be for policy makers to identify a set of appropriate goals
and measured outcomes for government policies to control immigration.
For any given set of specified enforcement goals, DOJ can develop a
range of performance and efficiency metrics to assess how effectively it
is achieving those goals.
With the minor exceptions noted in Chapter 6, DOJ has not set explicit
near- or long-term outcome goals for its own enforcement efforts, nor
have DHS and DOJ collaborated to establish policy goals and performance
measures for their combined efforts. (DOJ is developing a new strategic
plan for the fiscal 2013 budget.) Recently, DHS Secretary Napolitano dis-
missed the current measures used to assess the effectiveness of DHS bor-
der security efforts as inadequate for that purpose; that action may help
set the stage for interdepartmental agreement on new goals and targets.
OCR for page 124
124 BUDGETING FOR IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
CONCLUSION: Absent a clear statement of what federal immi-
gration enforcement policies seek to accomplish and adoption of
appropriate measures to assess whether those policies are being
met, policy makers and budget planners lack a firm basis for esti -
mating the effects of varying resource levels and uses on the per-
formance of both the Department of Homeland Security and the
Department of Justice components of the immigration enforcement
system.
Although the DHS and DOJ components of the enforcement system
are separately administered and funded, they are meant to function as a
single system. Thus, better coordination and communication within DOJ
and between DHS and DOJ is necessary to improve both the accuracy of
budget estimates and the probability that program resources will be used
effectively and appropriately to meet policy objectives.
Eight years after the transfer of the former Immigration and Natural -
ization Service responsibilities to DHS, DOJ’s planning and budgeting for
immigration enforcement programs continues to be hampered by limited
coordination between the two departments. There is an absence of formal
procedures for timely sharing of information about policy shifts, budget
requests, and changing conditions affecting resource needs and limited
capacity to build, maintain, and apply a complete, integrated database of
how individual cases are handled in the enforcement process.
The two departments have sometimes attempted to coordinate their
policies and plans at higher levels, but they have not developed a com-
mon enforcement strategy, targets, or estimates of resource needs. A more
systematic collaborative approach to planning and budgeting for the
immigration enforcement system could yield large gains in resource effec -
tiveness in immigration enforcement policy.
New opportunities are available to improve cooperation and institute
new procedures to plan and budget for the entire immigration enforce-
ment system. The Government Performance and Results Act Moderniza -
tion Act of 2010 provides a set of new tools for use by agencies sharing
responsibility for a common mission or set of objectives to jointly plan and
budget to improve their performance.1 The act requires OMB to identify,
1 P.L. 111-352, passed in December 2010 and signed by President Obama on January 4, 2011,
makes significant changes to the Government Performance and Results Act of 2003 (P.L. 103-
62), which requires executive agencies to prepare strategic plans and to develop and publish
annual performance plans and annual reports on their performance. The new act modifies
these requirements and codifies structures established to implement the 1993 act in an effort
to strengthen the use of performance information for budgeting and managing. One new
element is the emphasis on planning by multiple agencies around missions and objectives
that cut across organizational boundaries.
OCR for page 125
125
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
in consultation with Congress, a set of cross-cutting, outcome-focused
“federal priority goals” that will be the focus of cross-cutting analysis
and joint planning, budgeting, and reporting on progress. This new set
of procedures will be used selectively beginning with development of
the fiscal 2013 budget. Linked to the budget process, these requirements
provide an opportunity to formalize interdepartmental collaboration to
improve performance, as appropriate: this could be a spur for DHS and
DOJ to plan and budget together for their shared immigration enforce-
ment responsibilities.
CONCLUSION: Given the division of administrative responsi-
bilities for immigration enforcement between the Department of
Homeland Security and the Department of Justice and given that
the effectiveness of enforcement efforts is a combined result of their
separate activities, performance is likely to be improved by coor-
dination of planning and budgeting between the two departments.
Even with technical improvements in budgeting and better coordina-
tion in the preparation of estimates and prospective analysis of the effects
of changes in policy or practice, there will still be budget surprises, but
their effects can be mitigated in other ways. For example, Congress could
grant administrators more flexibility in the use of budget authority to
shift resources among alternative uses through broadening the range of
permissible uses of some budget accounts. This approach was the basis
for establishing the DOJ Office of Detention Trustee Program and account
to centralize responsibility for detention administration and spending.
Appropriations language could balance any increase in discretion over
use of funds with limits on the range of eligible uses, reporting require-
ments, or other controls.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Improved budgeting for DOJ immigration enforcement can improve
performance of the larger enforcement system shared with DHS. In brief,
an improved budgeting process would include
• reliable and accurate data on how cases are handled in the enforce-
ment system and how their handling is affected by national and
local resource constraints and decisions;
• clearer specification of the expected results of national immigra-
tion enforcement policies and how achievement will be measured;
• better information about policy performance and more timely
sharing of that information between DHS and DOJ;
OCR for page 126
126 BUDGETING FOR IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
• closer policy coordination between DHS and DOJ, in consultation
with the federal courts on issues related to court capacity and
procedure; and
• collaborative planning and budgeting around selected cross-
cutting priority objectives for border security and immigration
enforcement.
The committee offers six recommendations for an improved approach.
RECOMMENDATION 1: As a step toward collaborative planning
and budgeting, the Department of Justice and the Department of
Homeland Security should establish policy-level procedures to plan
and coordinate policy planning and implementation to improve
performance of the immigration enforcement system and to gener-
ate better information to improve estimates of resource require -
ments for system components.
The policy-level group responsible for coordination would receive
regular, consolidated reports from senior administrative personnel for
each border sector and other regions on performance, resource con -
straints, and other operational obstacles in order to improve operational
results. The policy group would request ”what if” analyses to estimate the
effects of planned or potential changes in policy, practice, or exogenous
factors on the volume and character of immigration enforcement activity
and flows of cases, using these analyses as a basis for resource estimation.
RECOMMENDATION 2: On the basis of a recurring policy-level
review and guidance, the Department of Justice and the Depart-
ment of Homeland Security, in consultation with staff of the federal
courts, should coordinate their preparation of annual budget sub -
missions and estimates for presentation to the Office of Manage -
ment and Budget.
This approach can be supported by specific technical changes in the
way budgets are developed.
RECOMMENDATION 3: The Department of Justice and the
Department of Homeland Security should accelerate their design
of an integrated capacity to track cases and project immigration
enforcement activity—including the volume and timing of major
flows—based in part on frequently updated analyses that integrate
case histories of people encountered as illegal entrants or residents
and the progress and disposition of each case.
OCR for page 127
127
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Using this shared analytical capacity, the two departments should
jointly develop and maintain a quantified flow model representing immi -
gration enforcement activity—including the volume and timing of the
major sequences of activity. Policy officials of the two departments could
jointly develop “what if” scenarios to estimate the effects of planned or
hypothesized changes in policy, practice, or exogenous factors, as dis-
cussed above. And the two departments could jointly report on perfor-
mance, resource constraints, and other operational obstacles to improved
results by DHS and DOJ personnel in each border sector and other regions
with high immigration enforcement activity.
In addition to the above recommendations to the Department of Jus -
tice and the Department of Homeland Security, we offer recommenda-
tions for other agencies that contribute to the budget for immigration
enforcement.
RECOMMENDATION 4: The U.S. Office of Management and Bud-
get should direct the Department of Justice and the Department of
Homeland Security to coordinate their policy development, plan-
ning, and budget development processes to ensure that resource
requirements match policies and strategies chosen to achieve
specified performance targets and to increase the productivity of
resources dedicated to immigration enforcement.
The OMB elements that are responsible for budgeting and manage-
ment of the two departments should consider conducting combined
reviews of their budget submissions that pertain to their shared respon -
sibility for immigration enforcement.
RECOMMENDATION 5: The administration should consider using
the requirements of the Government Performance and Results Mod-
ernization Act of 2010 to establish one or more cross-cutting federal
priority objectives related to immigration enforcement and border
security; to assign a lead person responsible for these objectives;
and to develop strategies, plans, reporting, and budgeting require -
ments needed to support accomplishment of these objectives.
RECOMMENDATION 6: The staff of the congressional appropria-
tions subcommittees with funding responsibility for the Depart -
ment of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the ele -
ments of the courts that are part of the enforcement system should
consult with each other regularly as they develop their annual bills.
OCR for page 128
128 BUDGETING FOR IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
The recommended institutional and technical improvements to the
budget process can reduce—but not eliminate—the uncertainties that
cause estimating errors and needs for revised budgets or at least tem -
porary operational adjustments for major components of the immigra -
tion enforcement system. While they cannot be eliminated, the effects
of estimating errors on system performance could be mitigated if the
congressional appropriations committees provide greater administrative
flexibility to the departments to reallocate resources while increasing
accountability for achievement of specified performance targets.
A range of mechanisms balancing greater flexibility with accountabil-
ity for results could be considered. The committee suggests the admin -
istration and the appropriations subcommittees assess, for example,
whether a broadening of the authorized uses of funds appropriated to
the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee would provide greater flexibil-
ity to reallocate resources in response to unanticipated needs and would
further consolidate accountability for resource allocations. Such a change
in account structure can be expected to reduce the number of requests for
supplemental or adjusted appropriations.
In sum, the committee recommends a set of actions—both technical
and institutional—to contribute to better budget estimates and resource
application, contributing to better performance of the immigration
enforcement responsibilities shared by DOJ and DHS.
